Speaking before the Eid celebration, Tirana Mayor Edi Rama said the municipality had a work plan ready to construct the new mosque behind the National Opera.
"The new mosque is needed by the Muslim community, which, like the two other faiths, merits its own house of worship in the centre of the capital," Rama said.
The request to build a mosque in the centre of Tirana has been a perennial demand of the Muslim community since the fall of the Communist regime in Albania in 1991.
In 1992, the then president, Sali Berisha, laid the first stone of a mosque to be constructed near Namazgja square, close to the parliament. However, construction was never completed after the speaker of parliament, Pjeter Abnori, a Catholic, contested the plans.
Meanwhile, over the last two decades, a Catholic and an Orthodox cathedral have both been built in the centre with official blessing, prompting Muslims to complain of discrimination.
When the government granted the Orthodox Church public land in 2002 to build a cathedral, former prime minister Pandeli Majko promised that a mosque would also get a go-ahead. But the promise never materialized.
Roughly 70 per cent of Albania's population are Muslims. About 20 per cent are Orthodox and 10 per cent Catholics.
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