Rama bestowed the high honor on General Wolters in appreciation of his vision, contribution and cooperation with the Albanian Armed Forces, as well as support for the role of Albania in maintaining peace and regional security.

In his speech, Prime Minister Rama said that “the general has a special place, I am not saying this because of the circumstances or the occasion that I have to say a few words. We were the ones who wanted to do this, we were not asked to do this, sometimes we are required of course, sometimes we want to do something as a token of recognition and we wanted to express our gratitude especially to General Wolters as one of the most outstanding people who has represented this relationship at its best. ”

“General Wolters has not only been supportive, but also inclined to show in deed rather than in word that this relationship is very close to his heart, which I appreciate very much, especially in the international relations of this country that ultimately concern the people. The Armed Forces will never forget that first and foremost General Wolters endorsed the transformation of Kuçova air base into an operations base of NATO, as well as supported from the very beginning Albania as one of the host countries of the “Defender Europe” exercise,” Rama stressed.

PM said that “other than that, it was General Wolters who supported from the first day the proposal of the US Special Operations Command Europe to establish in Albania a forward-based Special Operations Forces Headquarters.

Rama went on saying that “it is the first time that the person we honor today is a General, for me it is not the first time, but maybe the last that I have the privilege to award a medal to a general. The general was very gracious enough to tell me that he has been awarded every star and medal that the American state could bestow on him, yet another emblem on his uniform would be an extraordinary privilege. This is also a moment to celebrate the priceless friendship with the most precious alliance that this country has been fortunate to have, which is friendship and alliance with the United States.”

PM went on saying that “perhaps the Armed Forces are the best expression of our journey to learn and stand side by side with American friends and allies as part of NATO and at the bilateral level. “If today our Armed Forces have gone to a level that even the optimists would not have imagined 10, 20 or 30 years ago, this is down to the friends and our American allies,” Rama said.

On the other hand, Rama continued, if we have been able to understand slowly but firmly that we have potential to manifest in the alliance along with the drive to fight for what is right, this is first and foremost the result of the encouragement, strength, and solidarity we have been able to perceive from our American friends and allies.
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