Albania, A NATO Member

TIRANA, April 2 – Albania and Croatia have officially joined the NATO military alliance, becoming its 27th and 28th members after their ambassadors to the US filed their instruments of accession at a ceremony in Washington.
At a ceremony at the Department of State, Deputy Secretary Steinberg accepted Albania’s and Croatia’s instruments of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty for which the United States is the depositary government.At the moment the Deputy Secretary received the instruments of accession, Albania and Croatia became NATO Allies. Albanian Ambassador Aleksander Sallabanda and Croatian Ambassador Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic represented their countries in this ceremony.
“We welcome the completion of the accession process prior to NATO’s 60th Anniversary Summit on April 3 and 4, where Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader will take their seats for the first time representing their countries as members of the Alliance,” said a statement.
It is obvious that NATO wants to mark its 60th birthday at the summit this week in Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, with a symbolic expansion into a region which only a decade ago was at war.
Albania and Croatia’s long-expected accession came after all of NATO’s member states submitted ratification documents.
Croatia’s accession had been threatened by a border dispute with Slovenia, which only withdrew its veto on Monday.
Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic that had also hoped to join NATO this week, has not been able to because of a row with Greece over its name.
Albanian Ambassador Aleksander Sallabanda said Albania was “ready to take up all the challenges and responsibilities that participation in the alliance entails”.
“In this context, we will work with responsibility and constructively with our partners to strengthen the… alliance to protect our common values,” he added.
Berisha on Wednesday expressed his gratitude to NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer for the support of Albania’s accession into the alliance.
“You, the staff under you and NATO’s member states, who have given their support and help to Albania, have become a part of one of the most important acts in the history of the Albanian nation,” Berisha told the NATO secretary general in a phone conversation. Scheffer called Berisha to convey his greetings on Albania’s becoming a full member of NATO.
The two countries will be ceremonially inducted into NATO at its summit Friday.
“Albania and Croatia have worked very hard to meet alliance standards with regard to democracy, and the reform of their militaries,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.
NATO forces have operated in the Balkans since the mid-1990s, when thousands of peacekeepers were sent to Bosnia in the aftermath of a four-year civil war between Serbs, Muslims and Croats in which nearly 100,000 people perished.
In 1999, the alliance mounted its first combat operation when its air forces bombed Serbia to end Belgrade’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in what was then Serbia’s southern province of Kosova.
Albania and Croatia have “overcome a difficult period in their history to become contributors to regional stability and international security,” Appathurai said.
“They will now benefit from collective security the alliance offers, but they will also bear the responsibility that collective security requires.”
Despite Croatia having a military force of only about 20,000 troops and Albania only 14,000, Croatia has sent 530 soldiers to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan and Albania another 140, according to NATO.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha on Tuesday described joining NATO as the most important act in the country’s history for nearly a century.
NATO membership sends a signal that the countries are politically stable.
Founded in 1949, NATO has twice taken on new members since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, its Soviet-dominated Cold War foe. Seven former communist nations entered in 2004, following Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic who joined in 1999.
In contrast to the alliance’s previous eastward expansion which infuriated Russia, Moscow has not objected to the inclusion of Albania and Croatia.
The former six-member Yugoslav federation broke free of the Soviet Union in 1948, while Albania followed suit in the early 1960s.