Albania, FYR Macedonia and Montenegro meet to jointly tackle cross-border water issues

 - 06.04.2011

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha received, on Tuesday. the ministers for environment of FYR Macedonia, and Montenegro as well as the representatives of the international organizations (WB, United Nations Environment Programme in Geneva and the Global Water Partnership Organization) who are in Tirana in the framework of cooperation with the Albanian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Water Administration on issues related to the cross-border waters.   

PM Berisha highlighted the government of Albania assessment of the native water resources, the flora and fauna of the Ohrid, Prespa, Shkodra lakes and water basins. Further on, PM Berisha emphasized that besides the rational exploitation of the water resources there are identified several problems related with flooding risk that several rivers pose and especially the Drini River when there is heavy rainfall not only in the Albanian territory, but even in FYR Macedonia and Montenegro – as it happened last winter.

Therefore, the government of Albania has approved several precautionary measures and is working to adopt them while targeting to create a stabilized situation especially on the Drini River basin and prevent new floods in the future. The government, - said the prime minister- has planned building of the embankment on the Buna River, the building of Shkodra bypass as well as the further improvement of the drainage system all over the area of  Nënshkodra. In this context, work is underway for building of Skavica hydropower plant while it is already signed the agreement with Montenegro on deepening the Buna River bed.

The Albanian prime minister forwarded to the ministers the need of concluding new agreements on cross-border waters to replace the expired agreement with the former Yugoslavia. All the same, PM Berisha said he was ready to support a special project on the Drini River basin by the World Bank and GEF with the respective countries of the region so that to give final solution to the complex problems related with this basin.  

Albanian PM Berisha welcomed the interest of the regional ministers in strengthening further the bilateral and multilateral cooperation with the neighboring countries in the region and the international organizations. Likewise, the prime minister emphasized the need of joint actions and initiatives so that to accelerate finding solutions of mutual interest and launching of concrete actions.

Accompanying the regional ministers to the meeting was the Albanian Minister for Environment Fatmir Mediu. Source; Government