New road to Kosovo closed for work

TIRANA, July 6 – The Transport Ministry announced that the tunnel in the road segment to Kosovo inaugurated only recently would be closed to traffic from 11:00am Monday until 7:00am Thursday.
The company is to make the required reinforcement work at the Gallery South, which, for technical reasons and security, can not be done with the traffic.
The euro1 billion highway link to neighboring Kosovo was inaugurated last month, just before the parliamentary elections.
It is used by thousands of Kosovo tourists driving to enjoy the Albanian coastline.
Tirana sees the 170-kilometer highway running through northern Albania’s rugged mountains as an important commercial link not only to Kosovo, but to other Balkan nations and central Europe.
The opening ceremony was held even though portions of the highway have not been completed, as is the case of some part of the tunnel.
The main Rreshen-Kalimash segment, which includes a segment with a 5.5-kilometer tunnel, was built by a joint venture of Turkey’s Enka and San Francisco-based Bechtel International Inc.
The highway will run from the port city of Durres, 35 kilometers west of Tirana, to the Morini border crossing with Kosovo.