Greece says its support for Albania's EU accession bid is conditional

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece will back Albania in its decade-long bid to join the European Union on condition it respects the rights of its ethnic Greek minority, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday.

Ties between Athens and Tirana soured after Albania arrested ethnic Greek politician Fredis Beleris during a mayoral election campaign in his hometown of Himare last year and jailed him on vote-buying charges.

Beleris was released this year after he won a seat in the European Parliament as a candidate for Mitsotakis' conservative New Democracy party.

Speaking at the signing of a contract for a new road linking the northwestern Greek town of Ioannina to the Albanian village of Kakavija, Mitsotakis said Greece had always pursued good relations with its Adriatic neighbour.

But its backing for the small Balkan state's EU bid hinged on how fast it fulfilled long-standing obligations regarding property and other rights of Albania's Greek ethnic minority, the largest in the country.

"There is a continuous path of conditionality towards the European Union where we are essentially the regulators of the speed with which Albania will move towards Europe," Mitsotakis said before travelling to Brussels for an EU-Western Balkans summit.

Albania, along with Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, were promised EU membership years ago and have been in talks with the EU on how to speed up necessary reforms, which will ultimately help them join the 27-nation bloc.

But the process has stalled, mainly due to slow progress on reforms and also a decreased appetite among existing EU member states for further enlargement.

Separately on Wednesday, following a meeting with his Serbian counterpart Marko Djuric in Athens, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said Greece also supported Serbia's efforts to join the EU.

"Serbia's accession to the European Union is a geopolitical necessity," Gerapetritis said.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Gareth Jones)