Albanian ambassadors to Rome, London and Sarajevo told not to travel home for important annual conference due to political affiliation.
TIRANA, July 3 – Albania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has excluded three of the country’s ambassadors abroad from an important conference it organizes annually with all of Albania’s top diplomatic representatives to lay out priorities for the year to come.
After first inviting the three to travel to Tirana from Rome, London and Sarajevo along with their colleagues from all corners of the world, the ministry later told them to cancel the travel plans as there was no need for them to attend, according to Panorama, one of Albania’s largest newspapers.
The foreign ministry said the three — Neritan Ceka, Mal Berisha and Flamur Gashi — were in the process of being relieved from their duties as ambassadors, and that is why there is no need for them to attend the preparatory conference.
“The foreign ministry has asked the President to relieve these ambassadors of duty and has informed him of the reasons behind the decision — for clearly violating the foreign service law,” a foreign ministry official told Panorama.
However the ministry failed to provide any further details of how the ambassadors had broken the rules. The Socialist-led government has accused the previous government of stuffing diplomatic post with political activists – and the three ambassadors targeted in the recent move have strong political ties to the main opposition Democratic Party.
However, the government has come under attack from the opposition for doing the same – trying to fill top diplomatic positions political appointees and creating an us-vs-them atmosphere in the diplomatic service.
But the Socialist-led government has had difficulties filling many of the top posts due to disagreements with President Bujar Nishani, a former high-ranking Democratic official. He has veto powers over ambassadors and has used on a regular basis, leaving several ambassador seats abroad empty.
Independent observers point out both parties have broken the foreign service law by stuffing top posts with political appointees that are more keen to serve those in power than the country they officially represent.
Political conflict over the foreign service and stuffing diplomatic positions with political activists, they say, hurt Albania’s standing in the world, lowers the quality of the foreign service and creates confusion with host countries.
In the case of the ambassador to the Vatican, for example, the government has sent as the new charg顤’affaires the man it wanted to be the ambassador, but could not get by the president, because he had called the head of state “a moral cripple” in the press. The embassy remains without an official ambassador in the meantime, just as Pope Francis prepares his historic visit to Albania in September.
