The International Energy Agency, IEA, has dismissed claims that its April report suggested Albania breached the UN embargo on imported oil from Iran.

“The IEA did not suggest that Albania broke sanctions on Iran and any report that says otherwise needs to run a correction,” Magdalena Sanocka, a spokesperson for the IEA, said.

Sanocka said its report only mentioned Albania as a temporary destination for an Iranian oil tanker, which eventually unloaded its cargo elsewhere.

“Owners of oil tankers regularly provide a temporary destination when the vessels leave their home port and the cargo is unsold and this seems to be the case with Albania,” she said.

“The ship, the Swallow, is owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co, NITC, and appears to have been just a tanker in transit when it listed Albania as its destination and ultimately offloaded in Turkey,” Sanocka added.

Albania’s Former Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, on Thursday demanded a parliamentary inquiry into claims that the centre-left government of Edi Rama had imported oil from Teheran, breaking the UN-imposed embargo.

The IEA is an autonomous intergovernmental organization established in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD.

Prime Minister Rama responded by claiming that any breaches of the embargo had occurred while the previous centre-right government was in power. Rama said the IEA report referred to data from 2013.

In an effort to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb, the UN Security Council has adopted six resolutions since 2006, requiring Iran to stop enriching uranium. Four resolutions have included progressively expansive sanctions to persuade Tehran to comply.

However, Jonathan Brewer, a member of the UN Panel of Experts on Iranian sanctions, told Balkan Insight that the UN resolutions targeting Iran do not restrict oil imports.

“The relevant UN Security Council sanctions resolutions on Iran are 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1929 (2010),” Brewer said. “None of these resolutions includes language which constitutes an embargo on a UN Member State importing oil from Iran,” he added.

Apart from the UN sanctions, a number of states have imposed additional sanctions on Iran owing to its uranium enrichment programme, but Albania is not one of them.

In 2012, the United States and the European Union imposed an oil embargo on Iran, however the embargo was eased in September 2013 after Iran agreed an interim deal to curb its uranium enrichment activities./balkaninsight/