Arian Starova

Arian Starova is Deputy Minister of Defence at the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Albania, a position he has held since October of 2009. From 2001 until his current posting, Starova was a member of the Albanian Parliament but held several other senior positions during this period. From July 2002, he served as President of the Atlantic Council of Albania, and in 2005 was appointed President of the Liberal Democratic Party. From 2005 until 2009, Starova served both as Vice President of the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) and Secretary of the Parliamentary Commission on Foreign Affairs. Within the last eight years, Starova has held memberships on the Advisory Board of the Szeged Center for Security Policy (Hungary), the European Strategy Forum (Ponte de Lima, Portugal), and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Balkan Mosaic Foundation. He has also served previously as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Albania as well as several different senior faculty positions at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Tirana. He wrote numerous articles, research studies, speeches, interviews and other publications on domestic and foreign policy, regional security issues and other political problems for the Albanian and international press. He is also the author of the following books: On Kosova, the Albanian National Question, Modest Contribution in Democracy and In the Field of Foreign Affairs and Diplomacy, 1992-2004. Starova holds a Law degree and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tirana.