Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama continued to add fuel to the fire in terms of his socialist government’s relations with Athens, this time speaking in an interview to Albanian site Blakaned.

“They are hilarious to the point of tears, considering a garage-like structure to be a church and protesting because we are restoring our national heritage,” said the Albanian PM.

In his new anti-Greek outburst, the socialist politician used even harsher rhetoric, in the wake of the demolition of the Orthodox cathedral of Aghios Athanasios in the middle of the night near the town of Himara, which is largely populated by Albanian citizens of Greek origin. Rama had used similar words in a tweet recently when he said Greeks would get over their protestations on such matters and would eventually get used to it.

The Greek foreign ministry issued a statement earlier on Wednesday, calling on the Albanian state to respond accordingly and take all the necessary measures to prevent tension at the site between Albanian authorities and people protesting against the tearing down of the chapel.

In a subsequent statement, a Greek foreign ministry spokesman compared the incident to Islamist jihadis’ destruction of places of worship in the Middle East and North Africa.

“The destruction of holy sites and objects of worships took place, until recently at least, in the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa by Jihadis. Today, we saw this action take place in a neighboring country, Albania,” spokesman Konstantinos Koutras said, while uttering a particularly sharp quote attributed to ancient poet Callimachus, namely,
“No one is more ungrateful than he who has benefited by you”.

Meanwhile, Rama’s new nationalistic rant caused a strong reaction from New Democracy’s foreign policy head, Giorgos Koumoutsakos, who said the former’s created an ‘erosive intensity’, adding that by making such statements Rama was undermining his own country’s EU prospects.