Albania asks Greece to drop 80 year old law on state of war

Albanian Foreign Affairs Minister Ditmir Bushati said that Greece is willing to officially drop a nearly eight decades old law that declared a state of war between the two countries.

The law goes back to the Italian invasion of Greece, when Albania was used as staging ground, and was never officially repealed.

Bushati paid a two-day visit to Athens, which also included discussions about another difficult topic ­- the rights of ethnic Albanians living in the Epirus region in north­western Greece.

The two countries are also locked in a dispute over the maritime border, with potential oil and gas rich seabed claimed by both Albania and Greece.

An agreement brokered by the previous Albanian Government was successfully challenged before the Constitutional Court by representatives of the current Government, which soured relations between the two countries.