Cooperation between Croatia and Albania is constantly improving and the main precondition for its significant expansion is better transport connectivity, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic and her Albanian host, President Ilir Meta, agreed at talks in Tirana on Wednesday.

“We should strengthen our cooperation that is already fruitful, but there is great potential in the two countries for its further development,” said Grabar-Kitarovic, who arrived on Wednesday on a three-day visit to Albania.

There is mutual interest in closer cooperation in fields such as energy, road and railway transport, tourism, agriculture and food industry, IT and military industry, said Grabar-Kitarovic.

The main precondition for achieving more closer cooperation is transport connectivity, including the completion of the Adriatic-Ionian motorway project, the introduction of a ferry service to connect the port cities of Rijeka and Durres, and the introduction of direct flights between the two capitals, Zagreb and Tirana.

President Meta said that the two countries’ relations should be raised “to the level of a strategic partnership.”

“We have many interests in common, notably in tourism, energy and infrastructure,” he said, underlining the construction of the Adriatic-Ionian motorway and the Ionian-Adriatic Pipeline (IAP), which would connect to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

Those corridors would make our ties even closer, said the Albanian president.

Trade between Croatia and Albania in 2017 amounted to €61.5 million, almost 20 percent up from 2016. Croatian exports to Albania accounted for €55.3 million of the total, while Croatia’s imports from Albania were €6.2 million.

The two presidents also discussed the problem of pollution of the Adriatic, which is particularly visible in the winter months due to winds and sea currents, when considerable amounts of garbage sometimes float all the way north towards the coastlines of Croatia and Montenegro.

Grabar-Kitarovic said that protecting the Adriatic sea is of strategic importance for Croatia, considering the great dependence of the Croatia’s economy on coastal tourism. She also said that the chapter on environmental protection in Albania’s EU accession talks was one of the most complex ones, and added that Croatia is prepared to help Albania with implementing it.

She said that the two countries would work on that problem with the help of the UN Development Programme.

Albania wants to meet the necessary conditions and apply the necessary standards to solve the problem of pollution of the Adriatic. This is the beginning of our long cooperation on that issue, said Meta, noting that he also wanted Montenegro to join in the process.

Meta thanked Grabar-Kitarovic for Croatia’s great support to Albania on its journey to the EU, underlining the long-standing friendship between the two countries and noting that the Croat and Albanian ethnic minorities in the two countries were a major link between the two nations.

Grabar-Kitarovic said that the Albanian minority in Croatia served as an example of successful integration and was an important element of Croatian society.

She also recalled the contribution of the Albanian community in Croatia’s struggle for independence.

“Of the 18,000 ethnic Albanians who lived in Croatia in 1990, 2,500 were volunteer fighters in the 1991-95 war of independence. Unfortunately, 87 were killed, 386 were severely wounded and 37 are still listed as missing,” she said.

Meta congratulated Croatia on “the exceptional success” of the Croatian national football team at the World Cup in Russia, adding that the team’s success was important not only for Croatia but for other countries in the region as well.

Albania is to host a meeting of the Brdo-Brijuni Process in 2019.

Grabar-Kitarovic invited her host to pay an official visit to Croatia. In January this year, the Albanian president paid a working visit to Zagreb.

On Thursday, the Croatian president will meet with Prime Minister Edi Rama and Parliament Speaker Gramoz Ruci. She will also visit the port city of Durres.

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