Prime Minister Edi Rama interview given today to Fox Business:
Fox Business: Albanian’s Prime Minister postponed the scheduled trip to Serbia’s capital Belgrade Wednesday, and what would have been the first visit by an Albanian Prime Minister in nearly 70 years. Tensions are rising between the two nations following the altercation at a soccer match last week in Belgrade between Albania and Serbia, where a drone suspending the Albanian flag was flown across the stadium. The episode triggered a brawl between the two team players and fans that continued into a full scale diplomatic episode.
The incident comes as the two nations want to promote peace and stability in the Balkans and gain admission into the European Union. At a Fox Business exclusive, I spoke with Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama about the soccer episode.
Serbian officials accuse your brother of flaying the Albanian flag over the soccer match. What’s your response to all of this?
Prime Minister Rama: Their policies cannot be driven by a football game and by incidents in a football pitch, but at the same time I have to underline that all this is ridiculous, these allegations are ridiculous. There is no way that the drone was flown by Albanians being present in Belgrade. We didn’t send supporters there. I would also stress the necessity to understand how fragile our peace is and how much we need to work, because at the end of the day, so what? A flying flag entered the stadium, and so what? Is this the reason to leave with all this violence, with all this hatred with all these statements that are not helping anyone and are not helping the Balkans to be seen as a region where the past is over? And on the other hand I have to underline that what was very worrying in that stadium were the racist shouting of 30 thousand people who were for 40 minutes shouting “kill the Albanians, kill the Albanians”.
Fox Business: Both sides decided to delay the meeting until tensions subside. And Rama says he’s still focused on bringing the Balkans forward.
Prime Minister Rama: It is very sad that this football event is undermining a lot of what we have reached so far, but we have said it and we will repeat it that as Albanians we will not fall in the trap of the old politics of hatred and of the old way of communicating, of the hate speech that unfortunately has characterized the Serbian authorities in the last days. We still strongly believe that we should overcome this event by putting the interest of our countries first and the interest of our countries is to look forward and to work together for prosperity.
Fox Business: Russian President Vladimir Putin was just in Belgrade last week. Do you worry that the Russian aggression in Ukraine inspires Serbia which hasn’t imposed to use sanctions against its ally Russia to abandon its current policies and endanger the process of peace and stability in the Balkans?
Prime Minister Rama: If this happened, it would be very unfortunate for Serbian people and it would be another step in the wrong direction, because I strongly believe that the place of the Balkans is in Europe, is in the democratic world.
Fox Business: Prime Minister Edi Rama is now expected to meet with Serbian Prime Minister November 10th.
