Albanian PM Visits Flashpoint in Fraught Serbia Trip

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said Tuesday he was confident his historic visit to Serbia would help open a new era of ties despite a very public row with his hosts over Kosovo.

"Despite the difficulties, I am confident that we have opened a new page in the relations with Serbia," Rama said on a visit to the ethnic-Albanian town of Presevo in southern Serbia.

At the start of what was supposed to be a fence-mending visit to Serbia on Monday, the first by an Albanian premier in 68 years, Rama clashed with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic over Kosovo's independence.

"I told Vucic, we are not in a battle for a Greater Albania but for a greater Europe that should gather all Albanians along with all other nations and countries," he told the crowd that turned out to greet him in Presevo amid tight security.

"The minorities should be bridges that unite us, not separate us," he said in an address to local business leaders, politicians and young people.

Tempers flared between Rama and Vucic over Kosovo at a joint press conference in Belgrade on Monday broadcast live on television.

Rama called on Belgrade to recognize the "irreversible reality" of Kosovo's independence, prompting a visibly angry Vucic to retort: "I will not allow anybody to humiliate Serbia in Belgrade."

Belgrade refuses to recognize the breakaway former Serbian province which is populated mostly by ethnic Albanians and which unilaterally declared its independence in 2008.

"I have to reply to him because I will not allow anybody to humiliate Serbia in Belgrade. Kosovo is part of Serbia under the constitution and it has nothing to do with Albania nor will it ever have," Vucic said.

The spat added to the simmering tensions between Serbia and Albania despite Rama's trip -- which already had to be delayed for three weeks after a heated diplomatic row in the wake of violence at a football match between the two countries.

The Presevo Valley region bordering Kosovo was the scene of fierce clashes in 2001 between Serb forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas fighting to unite it with Kosovo.

Tensions have remained high ever since with Belgrade suspecting the Albanian minority of seeking secession, while ethnic Albanians complain of a lack of rights.

The Presevo area has a strong ethnic Albanian community and Rama received a warm welcome in the town, where about 1,000 people chanted his name and children waved small paper Albanian flags.

The streets of Presevo were put under tight security, with police officers deployed throughout the town and along the road to the Kosovo border 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.

Billboards carried Rama's portrait alongside Albanian flags reading "Welcome Prime Minister."

On the first day of his visit, Rama called for the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority in southern Serbia to be respected.

The trip was aimed at helping turn the page on the fraught relations between the two neighbors, long marred by disagreements over Kosovo and ethnic Albanians in the Presevo Valley.

Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 1.8 million people, while it is estimated that some 120,000 Serbs live in the breakaway territory.

The vast majority of the ethnic Albanian population in Serbia lives in the Presevo Valley, while a few more thousand are scattered throughout the country.

"This visit has to have an impact on improving our position because he (Rama) will have an opportunity to learn about the difficult situation we live in," said Nazmi Kadriu, a 72-year old pensioner.

"It is his duty to defend Albanians wherever they live."