Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has vehemently rejected media reports in Britain that his country could host a processing centre for Channel-crossing migrants.
In an interview with the Albanian news network Top Channel on Thursday, Rama underlined that "Albania will never be a country where very rich countries will set up camps for their refugees. Never".
Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka, for her part, went on Twitter to argue that it was the "same old fake news this time in the front page of a respected paper as The Times", in an apparent nod to similar reports about London-Tirana talks concerning the purported processing centre for migrants in early October. At the time, Xhacka also refuted the reports about such negotiations as "fake news".
A British Border Force vessel carries a group of men thought to be migrants into Dover harbour, Southern England, Tuesday Aug. 4, 2020.
© AP Photo / Gareth Fuller
On Thursday, the top Albanian diplomat went further by recalling in a tweet that "by the way, I am not a 'he' but a 'she' who has always admired the quality of [the] British media. Sad".
She was echoed by Albanian Ambassador to the UK Qirjako Qirko who said he was "furious" about the report by The Times because he earlier told the newspaper "at least 10 times that Albania will never, ever agree to this kind of approach regarding immigrants coming from France".
In an interview with The Guardian, he slammed the report as "totally fake", adding that "they don't mention a single word regarding the reality and they write what they prefer".
"I'm a lawyer. Albania has no jurisdiction to decide if an immigrant is legal or illegal. The international convention has arranged everything in detail regarding the process of assessing asylum seekers. The British courts will decide, not the Albanian courts", Qirko said.
He struck the same tone in a letter of complaint to The Times, in which the ambassador insisted that "there are no bilateral talks between Albanian and British government officials regarding processing centres for illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel".
Qirko stressed that "the Albanian government will never agree to [the] opening of such processing centres for illegal immigrants as this is an act
[that] violates international law".
Raab Doesn't Rule Out Migrant Processing Hub in Albania
The remarks came as UK Justice Secretary Dominic Raab hinted that the British government hopes to conclude a deal on a migrant processing centre in Albania.
Raab told Times Radio that the government is "looking at international partnerships that will take the processing out of the UK". When asked whether migrants could be transported to Albania in a separate interview with Sky News, the justice secretary said: "That's one country […] We are willing to look with partners at whether it's possible to do this international processing".
The plan for processing centres is being enacted by the British government as part of its Nationality and Borders Bill, which is yet to be passed and which aims to mend what Home Secretary Priti Patel dubbed the UK's "broken" asylum system. The country lost the right to transfer migrants to the EU nation they arrived in after the expiration of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020.
Over 24,500 migrants have so far reached the UK this year, including a record 1,185 in a single day earlier in November, as compared to the 8,417 in the whole of 2020.