Reflecting the delicate nature of Balkan politics after the wars that split Yugoslavia, the president of FYROM also stayed away after the car of his prime minister was hit with eggs and its flag burned in Tirana during a visit last week.

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s remarks were in a text he sent to a museum on Tuesday evening to mark the 100th anniversary of Albanian independence from Ottoman rule and honour the founder of modern Albania, Ismail Qemali. I

n the statement, he referred to “the Albania of all the Albanian lands from Preveza to Presevo, Skopje to Podgorica”. Preveza is part of the northern Greek province of Epirus, where some ethnic Albanians lived before WWII. Greece is Albania’s second trading partner and biggest foreign investor.

Both countries are NATO members. Skopje is the capital of FYROM and Podgorica the capital of Montenegro, both close to Albania. Presevo is in southern Serbia close to the border with ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo. “Such comments do not help in fostering a climate of friendship, trust and good-neighbourly relations between the two countries,” the Greek Foreign Ministry said, adding Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos had scrapped his trip over the matter.

Berisha’s office sought to play down the spat, saying he was referring to the “historical context of a 100 years ago” and that did not “express any territorial claim to our neighbours in the south, north or east”. Nationalists in Greece and Albania had long made claims on their respective lands. But relations between the Balkan neighbours have significantly improved since they signed a friendship treaty in 1996.

Last month, however, Greece had to apologise to Albania for placing its red flag depicting a black, double-headed eagle, upside down during a visit by its foreign minister to Athens. Albanians are by far the largest group of foreign workers in Greece – estimated at up to 800,000 in a country of 11 million people – and have been among the first to feel the hit from the deep Greek economic crisis. Source: euractiv.com with Reuters