Call for referendum on Albania, Kosovo

TIRANA, Jan. 09 – The Red-and-Black Alliance political party handed over this week a petition which they said asks for a referendum to decide whether Albania and Kosovo should untie.
The request has been handed over to the Central Election Commission in charge of holding election procedures in the country.
The political party, which was created last year, has turned the issue into a top case for its programme and is likely trying to get as many supporters and then ballots for the June 23 parliamentary polls.
The petition started Nov. 28 at the Albania-Kosovo border while all ethnic Albanians were celebrating the 100th anniversary of their independence.
It is not clear whether the CEC will decide soon on that request. It is not clear whether authorities really would like to have such a petition at a time when the country has asked for membership into the European Union.
There have been nationalistic words coming not only from this political party but alto from Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
On Wednesday Berisha decided in a cabinet meeting that citizenship would be given to all those Albanians living in the EU countries or the United States. For those in neighboring Kosovo he said that would be decided in negotiations with the Pristina government. He said that such move was made to respect the idea of the visa-free regime that Albanians enjoy in Albania proper.
He also said that these newly-naturalized Albanians would not be entitled to cast their ballot at the June election. Before he had said that decision would be taken after the June election.
But if Albanians living somewhere in Europe get the Albanian citizenship, who is going to stop them in their right of casting a ballot in their country?
Albania and Kosovo are both inhabited from ethnic Albanians who were divided a century ago from the big powers in the continent at that time. Joining both countries now seems not that easy, and possible. People in the two countries are clear of many differences of their mentalities, which may be normally subdued with the passing of time as they belong to the same ethnicity.
But what seems harder is to convince Europe and the world that such a union would be no threat to the neighbors in the once-called powder-keg Balkans.
And at a time when both countries have applied to become members of the international institutions (Albania is a NATO member and has applied for the EU membership, while Kosovo is still not a fully recognized country after its unilateral independence in 2008) taking such a step may not seem the proper one to promote themselves.