Albania |
United States |
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Diplomatic Mission | |
Albanian Embassy, Washington, D.C. | United States Embassy, Tirana |
Albania – United States relations refer to the current and historical relations of Albania and the United States of America, first established in 1912, following its independence from the Ottoman Empire, ending in 1939 due to German and Italian occupation in the Second World War, and re-established in 1991 after the fall of communism in Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The countries are as well members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Albanian immigrants first arrived to the United States in the middle 19th century, mostly focused in Boston. In Boston, the first Albanian weekly newspaper, Kombi (The Nation) started publications in 1906. Albanian-American Pan-Albanian Federation of America-Vatra was started in 1912 by Fan S. Noli and was politically active in World War I. While the international community debated over the partition of Albania, President Woodrow Wilson on May 6, 1919 deemed that "Albania ought to be independent."
The Congress of Lushnja, held in January 1920, it was a bicameral parliament that appointing members of its own ranks to an upper chamber. There was also an elected lower chamber, which had one deputy for every 12,000 people in Albania and, also one deputy for the large Albanian-American community. The regency council declared: “heartfelt thanks to President Wilson for his defense of the rights of Albanians. They remain convinced that the great American Republic will continue to support their rightful national claims.”
The United States supported Albania's current borders in and in December 1920 Albania became a full member of the League of Nations. The United States officially established bilateral diplomatic relations with Albania in 1922, with plans to give concessions to US oil companies. In February 1925 Ahmet Zogu became President of Albania and sent Faik Konica as the Albanian minister to Washington, Konica was the first official representative (his first office was located in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.) of the Albanian government to the United States.Then, when Ahmet Zogu became King of Albanians in 1928, the American government quietly recognized the political shift. King Zog's government was closely tied with the United States. King Zog opened an office for the Albanian consular general in New York, which was also the Albania representative in the World Fair Organization, as well as a consulate in Boston. From the late 1920s and early 1930s, there were four bilateral treaties and eleven multilateral agreements signed between Albania and the United States.