TIRANA, May 23 – A ceremony marked the inauguration of a monument dedicated to Ismail Qemali Vlora in Kosovo’s capital Prishtina.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama attended as did Kosovo’s top leaders.
The monument was a gift from the southwestern city of Vlora, where Qemali raised the flag to declare Albania’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. The country’s first modern head of state, he is honored in Albania as the country’s founding father.
Members of Qemali’s family where also present at the ceremony.
The declaration of independence included many of the ethnic Albanian areas that were later annexed by the former Yugoslavia. Kosovo is among them.
Rama’s attendance in the ceremony came after concern from Serbia and Russia that Albania and Kosovo are planning a union.
The Albanian prime minister said that wasn’t the case, saying there is no such plan.
“Neither us, Albanians of Albania nor those of Kosovo, intend to violate the word we have given the U.S. and the EU,” he said, adding the two countries were instead looking for a “spiritual, economic and social union with the European Union, and had by no means disdain to the neighbors with whom we also want to unite under the joint roof of Europe.”
Rama has continuously stressed recently that neither Tirana nor Prishtina aim or has the union of both countries as their goal, turning down voices of a so-called ‘Greater Albania’, which he said is promoted by those who do not wish Albania well.
