KALIMASH, June 1 – The prime ministers of Albania and Kosovo inaugurated Sunday the completion of a 5.5 kilometer-long tunnel under a 61 km stretch of road linking the Albanian coastal resort of Durres to the border with Kosova, something that will slash hours off travelling time for Kosovan holidaymakers heading for the sea.
That is the first highway link through northern Albania’s rugged mountains, nearly two decades after the fall of communism in Albania.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha met his counterpart from Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, at the last tunnel dug along the 170-kilometer road. The meeting was seen as a step toward stronger ties between ethnic Albanians on both sides of the border.
Albania and ethnic Albanian-ruled Kosova said they felt more united after inauguration of a key part of a new road that will give Kosovans faster access to Albanian holiday spots on the Adriatic coast.
Several thousand people marked the event by dancing to traditional music and waving Albanian, Kosovan and American flags.
Inaugurating the tunnel by symbolically meeting halfway in Kalimash, Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and his Kosovan counterpart, Hashim Thaci, said: “Tirana and Pristina were closer than ever and would get even closer.” “Today we have decided that there are no mountains, no obstacles, there is nothing that spiritually or physically stops this nation,” Berisha told the crowd.
Kosovo consists of a majority of ethnic Albanians who say they were cut off from Albania by the “injustices of history”. Their flags stood side by-side in a poster above the tunnel that read “Forever”.
Albania began considering building the road when the United Nations and NATO took control of Kosovo in 1999 after ousting the Serb forces of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, but it was Berisha who pushed the project forward.
“First, this is the tunnel of the union of the nation. We showed today that there are no mountains, no hurdles that could divide this nation spiritually or physically,” he told a cheering flag-waving crowd.
Berisha hopes the road will be a trump card to win re-election in the June 28 parliamentary election.
The highway was built by a U.S.-Turkish company and it is expected to boost economic ties between the two countries.
Albania’s north is the country’s most underdeveloped region, and it depends on Kosova for trade. The new road may also send tourists from landlocked Kosova to Albania’s coast, which they will be able reach in about three hours instead of six.
For 50 years ethnic Albanians in Kosova had little contact with their kin in Albania. Kosova was part of the Yugoslav federation; Albania suffered under the brutal rule of communist dictator Enver Hoxha.
Sunday’s event raised hopes the divisions would ease.
“Today Kosova and Albania, Tirana and Pristina, are closer than ever before … and we will remain so forever,” said Kosova’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci.
Even though the international plan that paved the way for Kosova’s independence rules out joining Albania, some people likened the event to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The 61-km section inaugurated on Sunday, including a 5.6 km-long tunnel and 29 bridges, has cost 720 million Euros. Built by a U.S.-Turkish venture of Bechtel and Enka, it cuts through a rugged and poor region.
When the 170 km road is finally completed next year at a total cost of 1.1 billion Euros the trip of around six hours to Kosovo’s border from the Albanian capital of Tirana will take just two hours.
“This road will carry ideas, goods and bring economic growth for our countries as well as our dream for national integration and a future in the EU and NATO,” said Thaci.
Trying to assure its neighbors the road was a project of peace for all the Balkans and not a path to a Greater Albania, Berisha invited Balkan states to use the road.
“We inaugurated a tunnel that not only unites the Albanians, but also unites the Albanians with the Macedonians, Serbs and Bulgarians by offering access to Albania’s ports,” he said.
The ceremony was transformed into an electoral rally by the Albanian leader, Berisha, with lawmakers from both countries and hundreds of supporters congregating in the tunnel in a show of unity between the two sister nations.
“We lived today one of our wildest dreams,” Berisha said, addressing the gathered crowd. “We did not tear down a wall today, rather a mountain that separated us,” he added.
Berisha also started to make some typical electoral pledges. “After the completion of this road and tunnel, my government can pull down mountains and give the country to Albanians on their palm,” he said, meaning more strength through his management during the last term.
Thaci also depicted the highway as a symbol of unity between the two countries, as well as a symbol of Kosovo’s new independence.
“The central element of this physical and spiritual connection is the freedom and independence of Kosovo, the Kosovar state,” Thaci told the crowd.
The road has been dubbed the “patriotic highway,” reflecting the widely perceived geopolitical motives behind the project – and the fact that no feasibility study was ever undertaken into the possible return on investment for the massive undertaking. Corruption allegations and cost overruns have led many to question the ultimate value of the highway’s construction.
Last November, following a 17-month investigation, Albanian Prosecutor General Ina Rama indicted Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha, for his previous term as transport minister, on charges of abuse of office in connection with the tender for the highway.
Rama said the deal with Bechtel-Enka to build the most challenging portion of the road, the 61-kilometres stretch from Rreshen to Kalimash, had cost the country hundreds of millions of Euros more than originally necessary.
The minister allegedly allowed construction to begin before the blueprint for the work was finished and in breach of Albanian law on open public tenders. He allegedly accepted a much higher price per work unit than was charged for similar projects elsewhere.
The price tag for Bechtel-Enka’s work, which covers a little more than one-third of the highway’s full length, has leaped from 418 million Euros in the initial contract to more than 1 billion Euros, according to prosecution charges.
Prosecution experts and the state auditing office say the Transport Ministry’s wrongful action cost Albanian taxpayers between 114 and 232 million Euros, depending on the method used to calculate the cost.
However, on April 10, the Supreme Court dismissed the charges on a series of mistakes in technicalities, arguing that Basha had not been indicted properly last November.
The opposition repeated Sunday after the ceremony that the Rreshen-Kalimash road segment had cost the country much more than it should probably have.
The government has taken out half a billion in loans in the last two years basically to cope with the high expenses of the road project.
