India rejects Albanian demand for Mother Teresa remains

India has rejected a demand by the Albanian government for the return of the remains of Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, buried in the city of Calcutta.

"Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land," Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.

A spokeswoman for the nun's Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as "absurd". Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.



Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.

The row is expected to intensify by August next year - the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth - by which time many commentators expect her to have been canonised as a saint.

The ethnic Albanian nun, who was known as the "Saint of the Gutters" for her work among the poor of Calcutta, was given Indian citizenship in 1951.