Albania raises flag at NATO headquarters

BRUSSELS, April 7 – Albania and Croatia made the last step in their first days as NATO members with a flag-raising ceremony held on Tuesday at NATO headquarters in Brussels to mark their accession.
The two countries’ national flags were separately raised in the presence of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the two countries accession is of vital importance for the Western Balkans, a region that has been plagued by war and civil unrest.
NATO membership for Albania and Croatia is an encouraging example for other countries in this region pursuing the same goal, he said.
Albania and Croatia formally joined NATO on April 1, upon depositing their instruments of accession with the U.S. State Department in Washington. Both countries participated at the NATO summit as full members in Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, last week.
Both Croatia and Albania urged NATO to leave its door open to other Balkans hopefuls. Sanader and Berisha both stressed the importance of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization eastwards.
“Bosnia-Herzegovina (…) too has the right to an Atlantic future,” said Sanader. “It’s the same with Kosovo, which Croatia also fully supports,” he said.
Sanader, who described NATO membership as “a strategic objective of Croatia since our independence” in 1991, also voiced support for tiny Macedonia.
Macedonia narrowly avoided a civil war with ethnic Albanian separatists in 2001. Peace was restored after a Western-backed peace deal was signed and NATO supervised the disarmament of the rebels.