Albania has accepted a U.S. request to temporarily take in Afghan refugees seeking visas to enter the United States, Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Sunday, as Taliban forces entered the Afghan capital Kabul.
Rama said U.S. President Joe Biden's administration had recently asked fellow NATO member Albania to assess whether it could serve as a transit country for a number of Afghan refugees whose final destination is the United States.
"We will not say 'No', not just because our great allies ask us to, but because we are Albania," Rama said on his Facebook account.
This week, sources told Reuters that Biden's administration had held discussions with such countries as Kosovo and Albania about protecting U.S.-affiliated Afghans from Taliban reprisals until they complete the process of approval of their U.S. visas.
There was no comment from the government in Kosovo, where hundreds of U.S. troops are still stationed as peacekeepers more than two decades after the 1998-99 war with the then-Yugoslav security forces.
In 2014, Albania accepted some 3,000 members of the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq, and they have settled in a camp near Durres, the country's main port.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Aleksandar Vasovic and Hugh Lawson)
