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has accepted a US request to temporarily take in seeking visas to enter the , Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Sunday, as Taliban forces entered the Afghan capital .

Rama said US President Joe Biden's administration had recently asked fellow member Albania to assess whether it could serve as a transit country for a number of Afghan refugees whose final destination is the United States.

"We will not say 'No', not just because our great allies ask us to, but because we are Albania," Rama said on his Facebook account.

This week, sources told Reuters that Biden's administration had held discussions with such countries as Kosovo and Albania about protecting US-affiliated Afghans from Taliban reprisals until they complete the process of approval of their US visas.

In Kosovo, Luan Dalipi, Prime Minister Albin Kurti's chief of staff, said his government has been in contact with the US authorities about housing Afghan refugees since mid-July.

"There's a lot of logistical, technical, security and social work that we are handling carefully," Dalipi said in a statement.

Hundreds of US troops are still stationed in Kosovo as peacekeepers more than two decades after the 1998-99 war with the then-Yugoslav security forces.

In 2014, Albania accepted some 3,000 members of the , also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq, and they have settled in a camp near Durres, the country's main port. 

(Reuters)