Mr. Speaker, we have received the news that United States Ambassador to Albania, Joseph Limprecht, died suddenly of a heart attack on Sunday, May 19, 2002, while hiking with his wife and colleagues in northern Albania.
Although I did not have the opportunity to meet Ambassador Limprecht, I did correspond with him on an issue of mutual concern–the trafficking of Albanian women and children into sexual slavery in Europe.
With porous borders and more than its share of criminals, Albania is used by traffickers as a key transit point to Italy. As a source country, young Albanian women are lured into the hands of traffickers and even kidnaped from their home towns or villages. The Ambassador was well aware of this tragedy and pressed for greater law enforcement to stop trafficking networks as well as greater assistance to the victims. Indeed, in keeping with the point of my correspondence with him, the Ambassador made sure U.S. assistance would go to a shelter for repatriated Albanian trafficking victims similar to one created for women found in Albania and waiting to be repatriated to their country of origin.
Beyond that, the Ambassador worked hard in the three years he spent in Albania in helping the country recover from its many ills, in particular the civil strife which tore the country apart in 1997. Given Albania’s vulnerability to militant Islamic infiltration, I am sure that the war on terrorism was in the forefront of his duties in recent months.
Ambassador Limprecht was a member of the Senior Foreign Service, having served with the U.S. Foreign Service since 1975, with postings in Germany, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as well as in Washington. In the 1980s, he served in the office which handled what was then the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and now the OSCE, and worked with the staff of the Helsinki Commission which I had just joined and now serve as Co-Chairman.
My deepest condolences go to the Ambassador’s wife, Nancy, their daughters Alma and Eleanor, friends and colleagues.
