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Albania, Italy, Serbia to strengthen trilateral cooperation

Xinhua, January 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Foreign ministers of Albania, Italy and Serbia during their meeting here Wednesday discussed concrete joint projects in the fields of economy, infrastructure, energy, tourism, culture, education, youth cooperation, and other regional projects.

The meeting of Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati and his Italian and Serbian counterparts, Paolo Gentiloni and Ivica Dacic, focused on identifying new ways for implementation of the joint projects, but also on further expansion of regional initiatives.

Addressing a joint press conference, the ministers stressed the mutual interest for cooperation in several areas and expressed satisfaction with their talks also on issues of regional security, and energy and gas agreements.

"The trilateral in Tirana is an opportunity to discuss key issues of our countries and explore facilitating mechanisms to address them. Albania wishes to develop excellent relations with all its neighbours," Bushati said.

"We discussed security issues, the ongoing security crisis in the Mediterranean, threats to the European security architecture in the wake of the refugee crisis and the need to continue efforts to deal with all the components of the international terrorism activity and our country's efforts to combat violent extremism," added Bushati.

In his statement, Gentiloni focused on the refugee crisis, stating that Dublin rules governing asylum must be revised if we want to save the Schengen.

Dacic underlined the need of finding the resources to fund vital joint projects.

"We would like to have excellent relations with all our neighbours and in this context we expect to implement all the projects we have discussed including the office for youth and student exchanges," said Dacic. "We want to leave behind the political differences and find a common denominator. Tirana trilateral meeting will continue in Belgrade, including extended working meetings of Energy Ministers to discuss concrete regional projects."

The trilateral meeting is an initiative launched a year ago with an aim to initiate a common dialogue of Rome, Belgrade and Tirana in order to boost stability in the Balkans. Endit