Sea border discussed in army chief visit to Athens

TIRANA, Nov. 29 – Albania’s army chief of staff Gen. Maj. Maksim Malaj held a three-day visit to neighboring Greece, invited by his Greek counterpart Gen. Ioannis Giagkos. The visit comes in the aftermath of the now cancelled agreement between the two countries on their shared sea border.
The Albanian general was heading a top-level military delegation there.
During the visit he talked with his Greek counterparts on bilateral military ties, Greece’s contribution to assist the Albanian army, air policing policies in the future, the new NATO strategy and the situation in the western Balkans.
They paid special attention to the bilateral cooperation of the naval forces.
Gen. Malaj had also a meeting with Greek Defense Minister Eleftherios Venizelos.
But the local media also reported that his visit was also used to talk about the now cancelled agreement on maritime borders and the continental shelf.
In January this year, Albania’s Constitutional Court annulled the agreement with Greece marking out maritime borders and the continental shelf in the Ionian Sea.
The agreement was found unconstitutional “due to procedural and substantial violations.”
Six Albanian parties, including the main opposition Socialists, had challenged the April 2009 agreement, accusing the governing Democrats of lack of transparency in negotiations with Athens.
That naturally created some strains in the bilateral ties, which have been in many cases strained in the past, mostly over the treatment of Albanian immigrants in Greece and of an ethnic Greek minority in Albania.