H.E. Mr. Qirjako Qirko:

In my country, one of the few things common among all the political parties that have been in power in the last 31 years has been their western orientation. That means that from Russia in the last 30 years we did not have any investment and we did not accept Russian offers because we know how the Russians act. We have this experience because we had a close relationship with them until 1961. The old dream of Khrushchev at that time was to build the biggest submarine base in my country but thank God we broke the relationship with the Soviet Union in 1961 and this dream was broken also.

Russia's focus always remains in the western Balkans. That is why we are being very careful with all the kinds of economic offers they are giving. The same with the Chinese. They act in a different way because they know the position of my government, of all my governments in the past 21 years, but in the meantime they are trying to act, communicate and do business with private companies. Five years ago, they bought a Canadian oil company and for the moment the company is called Bankers Petroleum. It used to be a Canadian company and now it is in Chinese hands. They act in accordance with Albania's law and respect everything, but we are very careful with any offer coming from these two countries because we know the experience of the Chinese loans in Montenegro which were given to build a highway. We learn from the bad experience of others.