In a televised interview, Rama said that Tirana has “nothing to do with the platform issued by Albanians in Macedonia.”
“There is no platform from Tirana, but a platform by Albanian parties to which provided our help. We had separate meetings with the party leaders of the Albanian parties, and we took notes of what they said. They joined forces together on a piece of paper,” Rama said in an interview for an Albanian television station.
Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party have accused Albania of pushing Albanian parties to prepare the ground for the creation of a third Albanian state in the Balkans, after Albania and Kosovo.
Furthermore, Ivanov recently stated that the platform initiated by Tirana intents to make equal the Albanian language with the Macedonian one and to change the constitutional amendment that comes from the Ohrid Agreement, with which ethnic communities in Macedonia receive their language rights depending on the percentage of population in certain areas.
However, according to Rama, statements of Ivanov and VMRO-DPMNE are not true and that he held no meetings with leaders of political parties in Macedonia during the electoral campaign.
Rama added that ethnic Albanians in Macedonia are “an integral part of a country with two entities.”
Earlier in January, representatives of Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian parties signed a joint declaration that will serve as a platform for their future participation in any government formed after the elections.
Following extensive meetings with each other and Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama, the three parties agreed on seven conditions for joining a new coalition government, which President Ivanov refused to decree.
