Kosovo Cancels Border Control With Albania, Scraps Roaming Charges - Reports

BELGRADE (Sputnik) - The parliament of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo adopted a resolution on Wednesday canceling border control with Albania and roaming charges with this country, media reported.

The resolution, proposed by the Parliamentary Group of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD), was favored by 69 votes out of 120-seat parliament, according to Gazeta Express.

In October 2017, Kosovo’s leader Hashim Thaci held a meeting with Albanian President Ilir Meta in Pristina and urged him to provide Albanian citizenship to all Kosovars, however, this issue has remained open.

In April 2017, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama made a statement that Albania and the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo, also inhabited by Albanians, could reach a "union." Shortly afterward, Thaci said that if Brussels "closed [the] door on Kosovo," all Albanians in the region would unite into one state.

The Kosovo War between the ethnically Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the forces of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro in 1998-1999, ended after the UN-backed international intervention following NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia's troops.

In 2008, Kosovar Albanian groups in Pristina unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia, and over 100 UN member states officially recognized Kosovo. However, Serbia, alongside Russia, China, Israel and several other countries, does not recognize Kosovo’s independence.