Albania rules out Kosovo partition

TIRANA, June 6 – Tirana has made it clear once again that it rules out any idea of changing Kosovo’s borders.
The same opinion was also mentioned earlier this week during the visit of Montenegrin Foreign Minister Milan Rocen in Tirana.
Both foreign ministers said they agree only with the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Balkans and in no way with the partition or exchange of territories.
Albanian Foreign Minister Edmond Haxhinasto said, “the only possible scenario for the region is the scenario of European integration.”
Haxhinasto also opposed the recent statements regarding Kosovo’s partition from Belgrade, calling them archaic.
Rocen too said that no one should accept a proposal that can have a negative impact on the objectives of the region.
It was initially Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dacic who suggested that Kosovo be divided between Serbia and Albania.
The union of Kosovo and Albania may be a solution to the perennial conflict said the Serbian President Boris Tadic to the German press. “Anyone who knows how to interpret history, will recognize that the formation of a Great Albania was an Albanian political long term plan, ” Tadic told for the German newspaper FAZ.
According to Tadic, Greater Albania is a risky project, but may be part of a larger settlement and the Serbs “can live with this (resolution). ”
The German newspaper also suggested that Tadic hinted that Belgrade would expect the unification of Serbia with the Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina in return for Kosovo’s unification with Albania.
Haxhinasto said that “exchange of territories means creation of ethnically-clean countries” and that this concept has always had a painful history in the Balkans.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas Countryman also turned down the idea of changing borders in the Balkans.
“This idea is an issue that can be a political issue within Serbia. It cannot be a serious issue for the international community to consider, and it is not an issue for the dialogue. Our position is the same as that of the Government of Kosovo and the majority of the European Union, that the status of Kosovo has been decided, that its borders have been decided. To reopen that question is not realistic today. In fact, it is a dangerous process because the borders of all the states in the region do not follow pure ethnic lines and it is impossible to create borders that follow pure ethnic lines. So to seek to begin such a process is an easy thing to say, but it is not a process that can be concluded peacefully. And so we have no interest, nor does Pristina, nor does Brussels, in such a process.”