TIRANA, Feb. 18 – Following a major row between the government and President Bujar Nishani on the nomination of Visar Zhiti as ambassador to the Vatican, the foreign ministry has indicated it will send the poet and former anti-communist dissident to Vatican as a charge d’affaires, bypassing the presidential veto for the ambassador’s seat.
Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati indicated Tuesday Zhiti will be sent to serve to the Vatican soon, though he did not give further details.
“We don’t have the luxury to have to allow capable people like him to sit idle,” Bushati said.
Nishani called Zhiti to his office to explain that he had nothing personal against the man, but was unhappy about how the Socialist-led government had been nominating ambassadors without first consulting him.
Both Zhiti and Nishani are former ministers of the center-right Democratic Party now in opposition.
Zhiti said afterward that he had not really understood the reasons behind the presidential veto and expressed displeasure of “being made an example” by the president.
Nishani first opposed Zhiti’s appointment saying that the government had not consulted him.
The government responded saying that Albanian laws did not required such consultation, and the constitution did not mandate it, adding that Nishani had decreed many other ambassadors before without asking for such a consultation.
Nishani then said Zhiti had made statements against the Catholic Church in a response to a senior Catholic priest in Albania who had suggested that an Albanian Catholic should be sent as ambassador to the Vatican instead.
The government said the Vatican had made no objections to Zhiti’s appointment. Host countries have the right to refuse ambassadors.
Zhiti, a former political prisoner under communism, is a well-known poet and writer and also has kept the post of culture minister in the last months of the Democratic Party government in 2013.
Nishani’s opposition to Zhiti’s name in the post has baffled analysts as they both have come from the same political party, the Democrats.
