Albania and Kosovo want to build connecting highway

AP ^ | Wed Jun 5, 8:49 AM ET | MERITA DHIMGJOKA

[Spar]

Albania and Kosovo want to build connecting highway

Wed Jun 5, 8:49 AM ET

By MERITA DHIMGJOKA, Associated Press Writer

TIRANA, Albania - Albania and Kosovo would like to build a connecting highway to boost economic and political relations, Prime Minister Pandeli Majko said Wednesday.

"It would be ironic for Albanians in Albania and Kosovo to wish to be integrated into Europe, before they are integrated in the region," Majko told a joint news conference with Bajram Rexhepi, the prime minister of Kosovo.

The planned 200-kilometer (120-mile) highway would link Albania's Western port of Durres, the northern town of Kukes, at the border with Kosovo, and Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

The highway would give Kosovo access to the Adriatic sea.

Because of the bad state of the existing road, most transport between Kosovo and Albania now goes through neighboring Macedonia.

The project is expected to cost between dlrs 250 and 300 million, a huge sum in one of Europe's poorest regions.

Majko said the World Bank (news - web sites) had promised to help finance the project but gave no details.

In the past, Western governments have been reluctant to support such a project for fear of fueling tensions in a region where some governments, like that of Serbia and Macedonia, fear the creation of a Greater Albania.

The Albanian government denies such aspirations and argues the road would boost the economies of both Albania and Kosovo.

"This project will show that Albanians are a stabilizing factor in the region, and not a destabilizing factor," Rexhepi said.

[ABrit]

You mean the whole war was to build this road? How clever of the Kosovans to get the Croats, Slovenes, and Bosnians involved. What benefit do these get from the road. Don't tell me, they get to take turns racing their cars up and down it.

[Spar]

Click my link, enjoy the reading.

[ABrit]

I've read your link. Tell me why a road, and pipeline could not have been built through Serbia, and Kosovo, with Milosevic and Yugoslavia still in charge.

[Andy from Beaverton]

Great! Now the Muslims can be more efficient and trafficing children, white slaves, herion, guns and so on. The road to Mecca is the road to hell.

[chemainus]

Kosovo was an invasion by Albania and the Muslim terrorist groups anyway....aided by some strange deal they had with the Clinton, America hating regime, administration. Hindsight tells all. Re-read John Sray. When will we wake up and understand the cohorts of Allah are on the march and the earth trembles ( unnecessarily).