300 miles long. The
lowlands of the west face the Adriatic Sea and the Strait of Otranto,
which is a mere 47 miles from the heel of the Italian boot. The Albanian
Riviera, the coastline that runs southeast from Vlore, is on the Ionian
Sea.

With the exception of the coastline, all Albanian borders are
artificial. They were established in principle at the 1913 Conference of
Ambassadors in London. The country was occupied by the warring powers
during World War I, but the 1913 boundaries were reaffirmed at
Versailles in 1921. Finally demarcated in 1923, they were confirmed by
the Paris Agreement of 1926 and were essentially unchanged in 1970. The
original principle was to define the borders in accordance with the best
interests of the Albanian ethnic group and the nationalities in adjacent
areas. The northern and eastern borders were intended, insofar as
possible, to separate the Albanians from the Serbian and Montenegrin
peoples; the southeast border was to separate Albanians and Greeks; and
the valuable western Macedonia lake district was to be divided among the
states whose populations shared the area.

When there was no compromise involving other factors, borderlines were
chosen to make the best possible separation of national groups,
connecting the best marked physical features available. Allowance was
made for local economic situations, to keep from separating a village
from its animals' grazing areas or from the markets for its produce.
Political pressures also were a factor in the negotiations, but the
negotiations were subject to approval by powers having relatively remote
interests, most of which involved the balance of power rather than
economic ambitions.

Division of the lake district among three states required that each of
them have a share of the lowlands in the vicinity. Such a distribution
was artificial but, once made, necessarily influenced the borderlines to
the north and south. The border that runs generally north from the
lakes, although it follows the ridges of the eastern highlands, stays
some ten to twenty miles west of the watershed divide.

Proceeding counterclockwise around northern Albania, the watershed
divide was abandoned altogether along the northeast boundary. In the
process a large Albanian population in Kosovo was incorporated into
Yugoslavia.

In the extreme north and the northeastern mountainous sections, the
border with Yugoslavia connects high points and follows mountain ridg