Albania brimmed with joy over NATO membership

TIRANA, April 5 – Albania is brimming with joy over its new NATO membership.
Albania and Croatia became NATO’s newest members in a historic expansion into the volatile western Balkans where the alliance fought its first war a decade ago.
After President Barack Obama on Saturday welcomed Albania and Croatia to the alliance, 28 gun shots were heard in Albanian capital Tirana as the start of the celebrations.
Tirana was fully decorated with NATO and Albanian flags, slogans and many cultural events were held. The opposition held a concert Saturday evening, that is expected to be followed with another one Sunday.
Government and parliament buildings have been decorated with the flags of NATO members and street concerts are scheduled.
Every evening, a projector outside Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s office flashes NATO symbols across the main street, on to what once was the office of communist dictator Enver Hoxha.
“This day entered in our history,” said Albanian President Bamir Topi.
“We remain determined to cope and win our internal political, economic and military challenges,” he said at the summit. “Our military forces will be wherever NATO will fight for freedom and democracy.”
Albania will benefit from the alliance’s collective security.
Albania was occupied by a succession of invaders including the ancient Romans and Byzantine, the Turks in the middle Ages and the Italians and Germans in World War II.
Communist Albania joined the Soviet bloc after World War II but broke free of Moscow’s control in the early 1960s. A xenophobic dictatorship ran the country until the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
“Albania, a nation that in centuries has only survived, now its future will be safe alongside other nations,” said Prime Minister Sali Berisha at a new conference at the summit, also considered membership “the most important act in Albania’s history” since independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912.
Albania was among the first former communist countries to apply for NATO membership, and polls have shown that more than 94 percent of Albanians back the move.
Albania, that has 142 troops in Afghanistan, has said it will add another company.
The tiny Balkan country also has a presence in Bosnia and in Georgia, while its contingents in Iraq and Chad have been withdrawn.
Next year Albania is expected to have a totally professional army, reduced to some 13,500 troops from more than 100,000 after the fall of communism.
Tirana is also pressing for European Union accession.
But celebrations were not the same in Tirana and Zagreb.
Albania, one of the poorest countries in Europe, was brimming with pride and the prospect of joining the alliance.
None of that joy was seen in Zagreb, where joining NATO was almost taken for granted and the real prize remains the more elusive membership in the European Union.
Since Albania applied to join NATO in 1992, support for membership has steadily risen to 96 percent after NATO’s U.S.-led campaign halted the Serbian police and army offensive against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.
But Sunday’s big party at Skanderbeg Square clearly showed that Berisha’s ruling Democrats were promoting NATO membership as their victory just ahead of the June 28 general election.
The EU has clearly said they will be closely watching for signs of progress. Such elections are important for progress toward the EU.