Albanian president visits Greece, Kosovo tops agenda

TIRANA, Nov. 26 – Albanian President Bamir Topi visited neighboring Greece on Monday to meet with senior Greek officials, including President Karolos Papoulias. This was the second of a three-day trip aimed at patching up relations between the Balkan neighbors.
Topi’s visit was the first at a top bilateral level since Greek President Karolos Papoulias cut short a trip to Albania in 2005, prompting Athens and Tirana to exchange formal complaints.
Papoulias was reacting to protests by ethnic Albanians expelled from Greece after World War II for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis.
Topi’s talks with Papoulias and other officials will include the status of Kosovo, bilateral economic ties, police and military cooperation, as well as the rights of the ethnic Greek minority in Albania and the estimated 600,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece, the president’s press office said.
On the second day of the visit to Greece, President Bamir Topi said he had discussed Balkan issues including the status of Kosovo with President Karolos Papoulias.
Topi said afterward that “the granting to Kosovo of the status of an independent nation would be a valuable contribution toward the final peace in the region.”
Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO-led bombardment in 1999 to halt Serb ethnic cleansing in the southern province, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian.
On Monday in Austria, international envoys were to make a final effort to head off a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo after a U.N. deadline of December 10 to reach an agreement over its future expires. Serbia, backed by Russia, wants more time for negotiations. Topi also said the future of the western Balkans lies firmly in Europe.
“I believe, and I am convinced, that the region of Kosovo and Albania, but also Serbia, see their future in the European family,” Topi said. The two presidents, who have little real power, strove to patch up relations strained two years ago when Papoulias cut short a visit to Albania after protesters gathered outside his hotel.
Relations between Greece and Albania have been strained periodically since the 1990 fall of communism in the tiny Balkan country because of perceptions of racism and xenophobia in Greece, and over the status and treatment of hundreds of thousands of Albanian immigrants.
On Monday Papoulias, who was Greece’s foreign minister in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, reiterated Greece’s support for the “European and Euro-Atlantic perspective of Albania,” which aims to join NATO and the EU.
Up to 1 million Albanians live in Greece, many of them without proper immigration status, while Greece is the largest single investor in Albania.