Serbian, Albanian PM to Face Off in TV Duel

The Prime Ministers of Serbia and Albania are to clash in a TV debate on August 31 in Vienna, following months of resurged tensions between the two leaders.

The show by regional TV production Okruzenje ("Surroundings") will be broadcast live in Western Balkan cities as diverse as Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Banjaluka, Podgorica, Tirana, Pristina and Belgrade, according to BalkanInsight.com.

In October 2014, tensions flared when a match between the two countries' respective national teams was abandoned over unrest which was prompted by the appearance of a drone over the pitch waving the Greater Albania flag (one including Kosovo).  

Aleksandar Vucic and Edi Rama have also been involved in the past months in several other public rows, like the misquotation of a comment by Rama which led Vucic to write on Twitter that he would never allow Albania and Kosovo to become a unified state.

But the two leaders have also been engaged in occasionally hurling at each other remarks on Twitter which do not seem to cross lines.

Vucic and Rama have met a total of two times this year, once in Belgrade and the other time in Tirana.