TIRANA, April 7 – US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Gabriel Escobar, Special Envoy to the US State Department for the Western Balkans, reacted on Thursday following attacks by former Prime Minister Sali Berisha on US Ambassador to Tirana Yuri Kim.
Asked by Top Channel TV on Thursday, Escobar said he was shocked by the attacks on the US ambassador in Tirana.
He said that he was shocked by the attacks on the American ambassador in Tirana and that he knew that the offensive of these attacks does not represent the Albanian people. He said Ambassador Kim is the personal representative of the President of the United States. As a State Department spokesman made clear in December, the US expects her to continue to explain and implement US policies, including those of President Biden, and her determination to hold accountable Albanian politicians involved in corruption that undermine democracy, said Escobar.
Earlier, Berisha said that Governor Kim has set aside the role of ambassador in accordance with the Vienna Convention and is violating every rule and prefers to play a role which does not belong to her status due to the terrain that she has found in Premier Edi Rama and former DP head Lulzim Basha.
Yuri Kim wants Berisha, a founder of DP, to not be head of the Democratic Party and she has called the head of the DP parliamentary group Enkelejd Alibeaj as party chair. Many DP deputies have harshly considered as brutal violent interference of Kim in the internal affairs of a political party in Albania. As a matter of fact, even some foreign diplomats accredited in Tirana consider this stance of Kim abnormal.
But this is not the first time that Kim plays such a role and that is the reason that her authority has been criticized by many analysts. /Argumentum.al
