Albania To Let Kosovo Use Adriatic Port

Kosovo`s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci sent a letter to Berisha earlier this month on the port issue.

Albania is to let landlocked and newly independent Kosovo use its Adriatic Sea port of Shengjin, Prime Minister Sali Berisha said on Monday.

Getting access to a seaport is important for Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority but is a former province of Serbia whose economy has been historically oriented towards Belgrade. It wants better access to markets in the rest of Europe markets and in neighbouring Albania proper.

"Prime Minister Berisha ... said Albania is fully ready to allocate to Kosovo a port to meet its needs," Berisha's press office quoted him as telling Kosovo's Transport Minister Fatmir Limaj.

Berisha and Limaj agreed they needed to study the possibility of enlarging the port of Shengjin, which is close to a road now under construction costing around a billion euros that will shorten the journey from Kosovo to Albania.

"Kosovo and Albania must work jointly to integrate and unify practices in different fields to make life easier for their citizens," Berisha's office quoted him as saying.

Other joint projects would include power generation, a railway link, unification of education and cultural programmes, mountain tourism and a joint network of customs checkpoints to "scrap bureaucratic barriers in the movement of people and goods", the office statement said.

Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci sent a letter to Berisha earlier this month on the port issue.

"The port deal would boost Kosovo's economic development and independence, and will bring many-sided profits to Kosovo, the Albanian state and the whole region," Thaci wrote.