Rama's powerful speech in the Open Balkans and Kosovo message: Let's look back, not back.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, through a speech at the Open Balkan Summit in Ohrid, has said that the presence of figures like Chris Hill, Gabriel Escobar and Varheley, proves that this is a successful process for co-operation among countries in the region.

He has delivered some messages to Kosovo from Ohrid, saying he should not stand by his back towards the future, but with an eye.

Part of Eddie Rama's speech that transliterated Periscope:

“This is an opportunity to talk about the Balkans as open as the Balkans are, we cannot come to a meeting to talk as we are used to when we go to Brussels.

We will talk very openly and have to keep the characteristic of this region without fearing that we can have more problems than the reason to be united.

I want to remember that we meet today for the first time in an open Balkan Sam after the war started in Ukraine.

I want to tell everyone, that unlike some of them, the war in Ukraine makes the open Balkans a greater necessity than for this sudden war to begin.

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting you here, on the eve of Summit, Ambassador Chris Hill. One of the veterans of American diplomacy, a deep connoisseur of the region that has served in Tirana in dramatic times, and today serves in Belgrade.

I believe Ambassador Hill with his presence here is one of the most reliable witnesses to the need for the Open Balkans. He's here to support the Open Balkans and this for us, for me personally, is very encouraging.

While I am very happy that Dritan here today is also with us, Montenegro's prime minister, as well as Zoran I am from Bosnia, as I am happy that they are the irreplaceable partners of our journey, Commissioner Varheley and our friend Gabriel Escobar, who is present through the screen.

But beyond all our friends and partners that are very important to us, the Open Balkans is important to our people, for the common space in which our children are born, and tomorrow they will take the fate of our countries.

Albania's Albanians, where there were over 60 percent in support of the Open Balkans, a figure exceeding the government's support today, and I am convinced it will be higher.

We have not expected the war in Ukraine to know the special relationship Serbia has with Russia. We have not expected this war, to know that there is a special connection between Russia and Serbia.

We have not expected the war in Ukraine to know that there is an unresolved conflict between Serbia and Kosovo, that we have all known.

But between standing on the back of the future or looking back from the future, we have chosen this second one.

We are here today because we want to keep going to the future without turning our eyes on the problems that are still unequivocal but convinced that problems are solved only if we get closer.

Unless day after day, we understand how important we are to each other.

Chris Hill told me that they dropped two atomic bombs in Japan and today one of the most important political alliances in the world is that between the United States and Japan, behind two atomic bombs and orders where Japan is today, if it stood on its back all day towards the United States and on their knees to cry two atom bombs.

Serbia in the Open Balkans has taken over implementation of agreements. Is it unconvincing what would happen if we didn't get that amount of wheat in Ukraine today through deals, even though there is war there.

What would happen today? The most rhetoric of the conflict, or the call to go to war.

We are, today, in a knife blade, as far as energy is concerned, that everyone, in all of Europe, across the world, but we are much more vulnerable than many others in while on the horizon there is a winter where the problem will not be the price of energy that will continue to grow, the problem is that there will be no energy to buy.

We don't have the luxury of standing on our backs and dealing with rhetoric.

Again, as with wheat, how true it is that the Open Balkans are neither mine nor Vuciqi's, nor Kovacevski's, nor Dritan's, the Open Balkans are of our Albanian farmers, our people's. /PERISCOP