From Baker to Hillary Clinton

Those years were still unclear for an Albania that left behind the communist dictatorship, when James Addison Baker III, the US State Secretary in the administration of George H. W. Bush, arrived in Tirana. He was welcomed by more than 300.000 Albanians who gathered in the Skenderbej Square, and by the Albanian leaders of the time, President Ramiz Alia and Prime Minister Ylli Bufi.

Dozens of hands tried to meet him. For everyone who lived this period, know that on this day was laid the historical foundation of the relations with the US, but also because the American voice was coming strong from into the dark pit of dictatorship.

“Albania has been waiting you for 50 years” and “Albania needs a Marshall Plan”, this was what the Albanians chanted in 1991. The answer was: “Freedom works”. This was the message of the first US State Secretary that visited Albania. This was not only a lecture that the big country of democracy was giving to Albania, but it was the trust that every beginner needed to take the first steps.

This is how Baker describes his visit to Albania, during a graduation ceremony in Texas, on 15 May 2004.

“It was a touching  and educating moment for me, because in Albania and the other Eastern European countries I saw that the American dream was a universal dream, because the people everywhere are looking for an opportunity to grow their children, to build a better life for themselves and on their values, not planned by the central government or the inhuman secret police”.

Every other visit of the US high rank diplomats only strengthened the relations between Albania and the US, as it happened with the visit of the US State Secretary, Madeleine Albright on 19 February 2000, the first travel to Albania after the bombing of the Serbian forces in Kosovo on June 1999. She valued the role of the Albanians during the Kosovo crisis, especially for hosting the Kosovo refugees that arrived in Albania.

Albright was known as the initiator of the plan that was trying to resolve the Kosovo issue in Bill Clinton’s administration, to the point that critics had named Kosovo the Madeleine war, connecting this with her past. Madeleine was born in Czechoslovakia  and she escaped both the Nazi and Stalinist persecutions. She asked the Albanians to support and help the Kosovo people, with the hope that they would be led by tolerance and she launched warnings against all efforts for a Greater Albania or a Greater Serbia.

Three years later Albania started the procedures for the NATO membership. The first step was the signing of the Adriatic Card, which brought to Tirana on 2 May 2003 the US State Secretary, Colin Powell, together with the Foreign Ministers of Macedonia and Croatia. Six years later, on 7 April 2009, Albania and Croatia were NATO members, while Macedonia had to resolve the issue with Greece first.

During the meeting in Tirana with President Alfred Moisiu and the Prime Minister Fatos Nano, Powell thanked Albania for its role in Iraq.

“I have always wanted to visit Albania, keeping in mind the old friendship feeling of the Albanians to support the American policy and the cooperation with the US”, Powell declared.

The peak of the 21-year diplomatic relations was with the visit of George W Bush on 10 June 2007, the first visit of an American President to Albania.

The images of the Fushe-Kruje citizens trying to meet the US president were broadcast throughout the world. Prestigious media throughout the globe said that he was welcomed as a hero. In Tirana Bush opened a window to the future of Kosovo, a country that declared its independence on 17 February 2008.

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