Bush Receives Hero's Welcome From the Good Folks of Albania ; EUROPE

Jun 11, 01:55 AM

Current Headlines: By Daniel Howden

George Bush used the first visit by a serving American president to Albania yesterday to make the clearest call yet for independence for neighbouring Kosovo. The US President has been harangued by protesters elsewhere in Europe, with mass protests in Italy and Germany, but he was received as a conquering hero in the impoverished Balkan state. The formerly Stalinist Albania, once among the most isolated countries in the world, has become an enthusiastic ally of Washington and its "war on terror".

Albania's enthusiasm for all things American was on show yesterday as a 21-gun salute was fired from the hills overlooking the airport to coincide with the arrival of Airforce One. Huge banners proclaimed "Proud to be Partners" and billboards said "President Bush in Albania Making History".

Red-white-and-blue paper top hats with stars on top were passed out to well-wishers. Albania also issued three postage stamps with Mr Bush's picture and the Statue of Liberty, and renamed a street in front of parliament in his honour.

Sali Berisha, Albania's perennial Prime Minister and formerly the personal surgeon to the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, eagerly proclaimed Mr Bush as the "most distinguished and important guest" the country had received.

The US President said he commended Mr Berisha on Albania's progress on reforming its defence forces and meeting performance- based standards required for membership.

"I look forward to welcoming you some time into Nato," he said. In a move that will add to the tension between Washington and Moscow - which supports Serbia's claims to the troubled province - Mr Bush said the UN Security Council should quickly decide Kosovo's fate.

The province of two million people, more than 90 per cent of whom are ethnic Albanians, has been governed by the UN since a Nato-led bombing campaign drove out Serb forces in the mid-1990s. "At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you've got to say 'Enough is enough. Kosovo is independent', and that's the position we've taken," Mr Bush told a press conference in the Albanian capital, Tirana.

Political leaders in Kosovo are warning that patience is wearing thin among ethnic Albanians and they will unilaterally declare the enclave independent if the UN stalls. But Russia has split the United Nations Security Council by backing fellow Orthodox Christian Serbia in its opposition to Kosovo's statehood, claiming it would set a dangerous precedent for breakaway regions.

Serbia strongly opposes the loss of Kosovo, its spiritual heartland dating back 1,000 years, and Russia's President Vladimir Putin told the visiting Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica "with pleasure" at the weekend that he had thwarted Western plans.

Yesterday, Mr Bush insisted on a deadline for a security council decision on the Balkan province. "If it is apparent that [it] is not going to happen in a relatively quick period of time, in my judgement, we need to put forward the resolution. Hence, deadline."

Tensions between the US and Russia have evoked memories of the Cold War, with Presidents Bush and Putin clashing over US plans to erect a missile shield over east Europe, and objecting to the eastward spread of Nato. Hours after Mr Bush spoke in Albania, Kosovo's interim Prime Minister Agim Ceku appealed to increasingly impatient ethnic Albanians to ensure the province remained peaceful while intensifying efforts for independence. "President Bush said Kosovo's people need to be calm," he said. "The only realistic, pragmatic and possible solution is independence for Kosovo and the time for such solution is now."

Since the collapse of communism in 1990, Albania has embraced the West. In Europe's poorest country there is near total support for the long-term goal of joining Nato and the European Union. During his reign, the paranoid and eccentric Hoxha told his countrymen that they were living in a paradise and set up tens of thousands of concrete bunkers so they could defend themselves when the envious Greeks and Italians invaded.

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