Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said Tuesday he was confident his historic visit to Serbia would help open a new era of ties despite a very public row with his hosts over Kosovo.

"Despite the difficulties, I am confident that we have opened a new page in the relations with Serbia," Rama said on a visit to the ethnic-Albanian town of Presevo in southern Serbia.

An historic fence-building visit to Belgrade by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama took a disastrous turn Monday when the leaders of the two countries clashed publicly over Kosovo.

All was going well as Rama and Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic spoke to reporters about turning the page on stormy relations between the two Balkan neighbors until the Albanian mentioned Kosovo, calling on Serbia to recognize the "irreversible reality" of its independence.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama will make a landmark visit to Belgrade on Monday, the first of its kind in 68 years and seen as a step towards calming tensions in the region.

Initially planned for October 22, the visit was postponed for three weeks following violence a week earlier that interrupted a football match between Serbia and Albania.

Just when Kosovo appeared to be heading for a degree of stability and normalcy, feuding politicians and fresh corruption scandals have plunged the fledgling Balkan nation into its worst political crisis to date.

A quirk in the young nation's constitution has left Kosovo in a seemingly unfixable political deadlock that could yet force fresh elections only five months after the last vote.

Kosovo's foreign minister made a landmark visit to Serbia on Thursday, the first since the former Serbian province unilaterally declared independence in 2008 to the fury of Belgrade.

The presence of Enver Hoxhaj and his Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati in the Serbian capital was seen as a sign that a recent flare-up of tensions between Serbs and ethnic Albanians is calming.

Albania on Sunday condemned the burning of its flag during a football match in Serbia, the latest in a series of incidents aggravating political tensions between Belgrade and Tirana.

The Albanian foreign ministry urged Serbian authorities to bring the preparators to justice and called on "Serbian politicians to distance themselves from those acts that are... harmful for the future and stability of the Balkans."

With the world on high alert over foreign fighters joining jihadist ranks in Syria and Iraq, Balkan states are launching efforts to clamp down on recruiting in their region, considered fertile ground by Islamists.

Of the more than 20 million people in southeast Europe, more than five million are Muslims, and an economic slump in weak states battered by past wars has fired up some of the disenfranchised.

Pope Francis warned during a visit to Albania on Sunday that religion can never be used to justify violence, making apparent reference to the bloodshed wreaked by the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

"Let no one consider themselves to be the 'armor' of God while planning and carrying out acts of violence and oppression," the pontiff said in speech at the presidential palace in Tirana in front of Albania's leaders.

Albania upped security on Saturday as it prepared to host Pope Francis amid warnings that the Islamic State jihadists could be planning an attack on the pontiff in the mainly-Muslim country.

Plainclothes police were out on the streets of the capital Tirana, with some 2,500 officers due to be deployed for the pope's visit on Sunday, his first to a European country.

Warnings that the Islamic State organisation may be plotting to attack Pope Francis during his visit to mostly-Muslim Albania on Sunday have been shrugged off by the Vatican.