From the speech by Mr. SABRI GODO at the meeting with the citizens of Shkodra, on 20 July When you come to Shkodra, it feels as though you should take your hat off at the Bahçallëk Bridge. I don't say this because I want to ingratiate myself with you and win votes, but out of an entirely sincere conviction, as I will try to prove below. Tracing history, moving stone by stone, takes us to the tribe of the Ardiani, to our queen Teuta, to the meaningful legend of Rozafa. Further on, the view grows hazy. Then all we can say is that Shkodra, as the center of the powerful Illyrian state, is the oldest hearth of our present-day nation. In the Middle Ages, Shkodra was renowned in Europe for its great kings. Shkodra was the center of the Bushatllij dynasty, before whom the Sultan bowed, making him twice vizier of Albania because he could not defeat him in war. Shkodra was the city of pride in 1835, with Hamza Kazazi and Dasho Shkreli. From Shkodra, 27 years later, came Oso Kuka. Shkodra was also one of the hottest centers of the National Liberation War, making the city a major headache for Enver Hoxha from the very beginning. Shkodra shone in the age of Humanism with Marin Beçikemi and Marin Barleti, the best-known Albanian humanist in the world and the most translated to this day. It shone just as brightly during the National Renaissance with Zef Jubani and Pashko Vasa. A succession of other Shkodran men, Ndre Mjeda, Filip Shiroka, Luigj Gurakuqi, Hil Mosi, Risto Siliqi, Ndoci Nika, became pillars of Independence. Distinguished Shkodran men developed our national culture, kept patriotism alive, and opened the way to progress and democracy during Zog's regime and afterward, including At Gjergj Fishta, Pater Anton Harapi, Kol Kamësi, Justin Rrota, Karl Gurakuqi, Lazër Shantoja, Migjeni, Koliqi, and the Pipa brothers. Two of the most cultured journals in the Albanian press, “Hylli i dritës” and “Lekë,” were published in Shkodra, calling on young people to look toward the West. Shkodra is a major center for the formation, advancement, and preservation of our national culture and art. German critics have called Fishta the Homer of Albania. Perhaps now we, too, will recognize him as such. It often happens that great people are recognized in their own country only after their fame comes from abroad. There is no doubt that Vinqenc Prendushi, too, will be better recognized as a capable poet and publicist; Bernardin Palaj is the discoverer of the cycle of the Kreshniks. He published “Martesen e Baliut.” The distinguished intellectuals and professionals Injac Zamputi, Ramada Sokoli, Zija Dibra, and Frederik Shiroka were born here. The painters Kolë Idromeno, Simon Rrota, and Zef Kolombi are from this city. Shkodrans include the early musicians Paluk Kurti and Martin Gjoka, and those of our own day, Prenk Jakova, Çesk Zadeja, Tonin Harapi, Tish Daija, and Gjon Shllaku. Here, among a people who sing, the early voices of Palok Kurti and Martin Gjoka flourished, as did Harapi, Tish Daija, and Gjon Simoni. Here, among a people who all sing, the voices of Maria Kraja, Avni Mula, and Bik Ndoja stood out. Here, 113 years ago, the Arbëresh drama by Leonard de Martino was performed in Albanian, and Shkodra's theater has continued its glorious tradition up to the present with distinguished authors and actors, among whom Mihal Popi, Loro Kovaçi, Tano Banushi, and Tinka Kurti come to mind. When we speak of history, patriotism, and culture, we must turn our eyes toward Shkodra. In the treasury of our literature, Shkodran authors hold the place of honor. In painting and music, once again we must open our eyes and ears to what Shkodra has created. And no one can match Shkodran craftsmanship, practiced for centuries by master artisans. Nor can anyone match Shkodran humor. It is a humor connected with optimism, which helps Shkodrans stay lively and also get through, at any time, personal and shared hardships. (continued on page 4)

The Vice-President of the CSCE Parliamentary Assembly calls for Greece to be expelled from the Council of Europe According to “Le Monde,” the CSCE accuses Greece of violating the embargo against Serbia and Montenegro. “It is intolerable that a member country of the Council of Europe and NATO should continue to fuel prohibited trafficking to Serbia through Macedonia,” declared Bjeregard, Vice-President of the CSCE Parliamentary Assembly. If it continues this policy and this double game, provision must finally be made to deprive it of the main advantages it receives from the Council of Europe; indeed, the Council of Europe should expel it.

Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, attacked Washington on Tuesday, accusing it of “racial madness.” In his speech, Hussein denounced the USA in the strongest anti-American rhetoric, accusing them of political aims and of a “conspiracy.” Two days earlier, the USA and Washington were attacked by the Albanian newspaper “Zëri i popullit,” by an apparently anonymous author writing in an archaic Stalinist style, accusing the USA of being the “international gendarme” and, at the same time, of an old and new “conspiracy” against Albania. REUTERS, commenting on Saddam Hussein’s attack on Tuesday, could not have described Saddam’s speech as the most savage anti-American attack had it waited for the ultra-Stalinist attack by “Zëri i popullit.”

Burrel Prison, built at the beginning of Zog's reign, where during 50 years of dictatorship only one prisoner managed to escape, will be turned into a museum. Parliament is expected to confirm the conversion of this prison into a museum after approving the law that will enable prisons to be transferred to the administration of the Ministry of Justice, ATSH reports. THE EDITOR

To what extent is it profitable for Greece to raise the issue of minorities? To what extent are near and distant neighbors spectators in this confrontation? The Bishop of Athens Krito Dullo—Christ’s prisoner—wants an “Orthodox axis” to counter the imaginary “Islamic arc” Dr. APOLLON BAÇE In a murky environment filled with gas, one must never strike a match. The Albanian police, accustomed to heating with wood, seem not to know this simple principle. The warning ordering the troublemaking Chrysostomos—“the golden-mouthed” one, who was distributing maps showing Southern Albania joined forever to Greece—to leave was carried out late at night, as though someone did not want another dawn to come. In an atmosphere charged with resentment among the vorreoipites, the Church, politicians, and the mass media, an explosion was inevitable: the “casus belli” was found. The Greek Prime Minister, Micotakis, forcefully slapped six points onto the table, in the customary southern Balkan manner: Northern Epirus is Greek, the Golden-Mouthed one must return,... He was very pleased that the Albanian side could not fulfill these demands. Meanwhile, with a ratio of one Golden-Mouthed one to 22,000 emigrants, a population the size of Gjirokastra had burst across the border. Their outgrowths reaching Tirana denounced the government—not the Greek government that had expelled them, but the Albanian one. All this gave the impression that a six-point program was being put into effect, like that of the geometer newspaper “Efterropia”: Albania had become a member of the Islamic Conference. All aid to the government in power should be cut off; all the emigrants should return... Then the flow subsided. Is Greece really acting out of compassion for Albania’s economic independence, as the Foreign Minister, Papakostantinu, says, or does Greece also benefit? Are Albanians the only ones harmed when the arrangement falls apart? Where does nationalist passion end and economic pragmatism begin? Work-hotel, hotel-work, two or three days until the wave passes. That was the stereotypical news about the “afendikoj” reported by the police. First, the “afendikoi” do not like at all to mix mortar, gather fishhek, or work on an antiquated lathe. Moreover, two thousand dollars from the underpaid labor of Albanians is not so little for a debtor state like Greece, which costs the European Community 2,500 dollars per family per year. In the end, one branch of the tree was noisily shaken, but it was a branch with fewer fruits. In a raid of this kind, the owner of the tree is the main beneficiary. On what does Micotakis base his six points? Even the most ignorant Greek “knows” that “Gjirokastra is Northern Epirus and Northern Epirus, according to authentic Byzantine tradition, is Greek.” He also “knows” that the best religion is the Orthodox religion, that Orthodox means the true faith, and that the Orthodox religion is the only true faith. And since the constitution is also made in the name of the “Holy Trinity,” the role of this Orthodox-nationalist church cannot even be questioned. But here a contradiction emerges between the line of the austere missionary scholar educated in Germany, Janullatos-Anastas, who, in the heat of Africa, managed to convert even former— (continued on page 4)

The headline written above these lines may seem paradoxical. Albania, impoverished, ruined and [word unclear], has no chance of helping any country in the European Community, much less Greece. This does not at all mean that the generosity of emigrants from abroad in Albania should not remind us that, twice, the Albanian people opened the door of their poor home to the Greek people when they were enduring dictatorships and civil war. The first time was in the autumn of 1913, when the people of Greece were in need of help. Nor does this fact deny that only a few decades ago the Greeks—the several thousand Greeks who had left their homeland—[passage unclear] for greater tolerance towards them, in “gratitude” for the friendship, but also towards ... for greater tolerance. There are individuals from “Gratitude” and many ... [unclear text] simply of Greek aid (whose amplification is unacceptable), not so much to explain and prove our “paradox” written in the headline as to genuinely say “thank you” to those who have given to us and for what they have given us. In the European Community, its bodies and the institutions of the world community—not to mention the Greek press and mass media—Greece’s aid to Albania has been publicized on such a scale that it creates the impression that “Greece is saving Albania”. “Loans” forgiven by the Greek state have been amplified into millions. In a recent case, escalated to influence [unclear] Greek policy, the assistance given to Albania by the European Community and Greece, Greece has made one of its latest contributions, following the typhoons, [providing] more than 30% of the aid, after the USA, Turkey, Germany and others. Taking a broader view, the policy of Albania’s strategic integration cannot be “amplified” by Greece. But what! Has the Greek state forgotten the health services provided to our refugees in Greece? In addition to other health services, our refugees were also vaccinated. But how many Albanian refugees are there in Greece? When it comes to filling in the statistics on spending for vaccinations and medical treatment, the number of refugees grows. It is no longer said that there are 150,000 in Greece, but 200,000 or more, just as the number of refugees grows when crimes committed in Greece over the last two years are counted. It is the task of medical calculations (continued on page 3)

Regardless of concepts, political (and why not moral) scruples, ideological inheritance, provincial complexes, and perhaps even anti-Albanianism expressed in Albanian, only a “fool” could try to prove the (malicious) claim that, since the existence of the Albanian state, present-day Albania has had less support on the world stage. In a series of articles in Albanian published by the newspaper “Shqip,” this very thesis is debated, among others, by Mr. Shaban Sinani, who, together with his colleagues Çupi and Polovina, arrives repeatedly at the single conclusion that “the post-communist state, through its policies, is the cause and the reason for a new isolation of Albania.” Mr. Sinani’s claims that: a) the foreign policy of today’s Albania has brought about estrangement from all its neighbors... b) “This foreign policy cooled and drove away natural and traditional allies, Germany and Italy.” c) This policy “declared an orientation toward Europe undesirable”—before serving to create the impression that “Albania has entered a dead end”—must first be substantiated and compared with today’s realities and developments. The thesis that present-day Albania has alienated itself from all (?!?) its neighbors is put forward in a situation of tension in relations with our southern neighbor, Greece. I would like to recall that more than 80 years ago—thus somewhat more than “Albania’s very existence”—Monsignor Noli and other prelates, by conducting the first Albanian-language liturgy in the entire history of the (Eastern) Orthodox Church, would oppose today’s Greek Prime Minister, Micotaqis, and “alienate” themselves from neighboring Greece, precisely because Greece would demand of the Albanian state that the Albanian language not be used in religious services. The statement by the senior official Micotaqis, demanding that the Albanian state not use the Albanian language in the Albanian Church—a statement which, as we have said, Monsignor Noli opposed and laid to rest in 1908 in Boston and in 1920 in Korçë—and Mr. Micotaqis’s other statement, that “the Greek Government seeks the same rights for the Greek community in Albania as the Albanian Government seeks for Kosovo,” are presented as views fundamentally committed to good neighborly relations between Greece and Albania. Faced with these kinds of “commitments” to good neighborly relations, the foreign policy of present-day Albania has shown patience and tolerance and has not sought confrontation. If the price of good neighborliness is precisely what official Greece demands—that is, among other things, banning the Albanian language in religious services in Albania and equating the status of the Greek minority in Albania with the status of “Albanias in their own lands in Kosovo”—an integral part of Albania, while calls for the Hellenization and annexation of southern Albania as far as the Shkumbin are now voiced not only by certain circles but also by constituent segments of official Greek policy, then I believe, Mr. Shaban Sinani, that you may have had your credit lines opened and this has been accomplished for only 7.9 million dollars. • In June 1991, the Greek Government asked the Administrative Council of the Social Fund at the Council of Europe for a fund of 14 million ECU (1368 million $), justifying this by the establishment of 12 centers to receive and assist refugees from Albania of Greek origin. Thousands upon thousands of Albanians work like slaves in Greece, being paid in the most discriminatory manner.

“Papandreu is fanning the winds

This is what Egon Klepsh, President of the European Parliament, said. He arrived in Albania for the first time on Monday. “The Albanian people have decided to take the democratic path. But the structures of a state cannot be changed from one day to the next. We, the European Community, and above all the European Parliament, support the whole of your democratic foundation and will do everything to ease your country’s difficult path towards a better future. But you yourselves also have a responsible part to play in developing and building your country. You have managed, from an extremely difficult starting point, to achieve results that are envied by all the countries of the Community.” Regarding Albanian-Greek relations, Mr. Klepsh said, “Your policy towards the Greek minority in Albania is excellent.”

“Papandreou fans the ominous winds of hatred between the peoples of the Balkans” Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief, Andreas Papandreou’s reply to your newspaper “Die Presse”, dated June 21, 1993, came as a surprise to Albanian public opinion, especially as regards his position towards our country and people, who have shared a traditional friendship with Greece since antiquity. He put forward the speculative theses of Serbian pseudo-historians on Kosovo’s autochthony and made dubious, far-reaching conjectures about a possible Albanian-Serbian conflict. With specific aims, he repeated the Greater Serbian thesis that “Kosovo is Serbia’s cradle, their Jerusalem”, although he knows well that the churches of Deçan and Pejë existed as far back as Byzantine times, when the local Albanian population, among the first European peoples to be Christianized, attended them many centuries before the Slavs’ arrival in the Balkans. As for Serbian “nostalgia” for the battle against the Ottomans in 1389 on Kosovo’s “Field of Blackbirds”, Serbian ideology has raised this centuries-old myth to demonstrate the fanaticism of the Greater Serbians—those Don Quixotes of the 20th century—because historians have clearly established that the battle was fought by a coalition of the Christian peoples of the Balkans, in which, alongside the Serbs and other nations, Albanian armies also took part, led by the most powerful commanders of that time, Gjergj Balsha II and Teodor Muzaka. We would also remind Mr. Papandreou that his Slavic allies in the Balkans, with Russia’s support, severed from Albania such large regions as Toplica, Plava, Gucia, Ulqin, etc., at the Congress of Berlin (1878), expelling tens of thousands of Albanians from there during the ethnic cleansing of

The madwoman N. of Tirana, from her home and all the way to Tuesday, was seen on the main streets walking in front with red paint on which one could read: “The Prime Minister of Greece’s six disharat”. Such written slogans, she distributed in preparation to foreign embassies in Tirana and to several newspaper editorial offices, while shouting that some newspapers had published Micotaqi’s speech in Greek. What difference does their appearance make from Greek? The madwoman was dressed in a black gown when she was surrounded by a crowd of people in central Tirana. The madwoman N. shouted: “The leaflets against Albania were not distributed by Kristostomos. This priest did not distribute any maps of Greater Greece either. They were distributed either by SHIK or the newspaper ‘Koha Jonë’ or by Kleos Latis,” said the madwoman, addressing one of the caretakers. “No, I’m not the man named Kleos. I am Turkish, I am Muslim; I am certainly not a lowly Greek. The law ... makes [me] mad. With igj Nautlastoi I also belong to the director and savior of Petro Nini Luarasi in Luaras of Kolonjë. I want autonomy and I am a deputy; I want autonomy for the Greek lands in Albania. Albania took these lands from Greece in 1913. I want the lands that belong to me. The anti-Greek lobby in Albanian parties is very strong. Only Namik Hoti is not Greek. Don’t listen to the politician shouting against Greece from London, nor the other British people in the restaurant ... [unclear text]. The [unclear] in Tirana with the anti-Greek lobby of the Greek embassy in Tirana. Declare Hydajet Beqiri a National Hero. His bust should be placed in ‘Aleanca’ Square. Declare Tuesday Hydajet’s Day. Wednesday is Janullatos’s Day. Friday is Sebastianos’s Day. And Fano heperhe will not have a special day. Hasan Muçopeta. Dashnor Dervishi, Lulit Dautali, Fatobe Nano, Anastas Angjeli will hold a rally on Friday in defense of the underprivileged. Dokle will open the rally, explaining acceptably that once he suffered greatly, it is a wave and it is now his duty to defend the underprivileged. Serbs-Peloponnese will not ... do it under the name of SORRA. Anari çala will be released from prison for lack of evidence. The Justice Council will apologize to him. The chronicler

The day before yesterday in Tirana, the World Bektashi Headquarters held its sixth Congress. The Congress was also greeted by the chairman of the PRSH, Mr. Sabri Godo. In his speech, Mr. Godo said, among other things, that the Bektashi tekkes had been cradles of patriotism, which had given the country distinguished people. He mentioned the renowned Frashërllinjtë. Mr. Godo also recounted his impressions of meeting Baba Rexhepi in Detroit, America, and said that under the conditions now created, the Bektashi tekkes would take their rightful place. Mr. Godo’s greeting was received with warm applause by those present. Correspondent of the Republic