Conflict on the horizon Albania gets ready Page 3

Speedboat carrying 30 Albanian migrants collides with Italian patrol boat Page 9 Serbs and Montenegrins

For two days in a row, the socialist press has directly accused the chairman of the Republican Party, Fatmir Mediu, of trafficking drugs, prostitutes and visas. Judging by the accusations being aired, it would seem that Mr. Mediu has far surpassed the stature of the American crime boss of the 1920s, Al Capone, and is equaled only by the head of the Colombian mafia, Pablo Escobar(!)... The accusations are not only laughable, but so far exceed the normal logic of things that they become entirely unbelievable. It is abundantly clear that the attacks against the chairman of the Republican Party are nothing other than the prologue to a violent elec- electoral campaign, whose strategy has been defined down to the finest details in the secret offices of the socialists. The authors of the accusations against the Republican leader, who are at the highest levels of the current government, have become so carried away with their intrigue that they have forgotten

: that by accusing Mediu, they have accused their own Intelligence Service, which failed to perform its constitutional duty of gathering evidence against “this major-league trafficker” and handing it over to the Justice system. By accusing the chairman of the Republican Party, they have accused their own Prosecutor’s Office, which has not opened a criminal case against a public figure involved “in illegal affairs.” By accusing Mediu, they have accused the law-enforcement authorities, which, despite claiming successes in the fight against Drugs, apparently have left the foreigners in Tirana untouched. But the accusers’ aim is not simply to attack the citizen Fatmir Mediu, but the Republican Party, which has insistently called for a fight against organized crime, which has clearly spread to the highest levels of power. The Republican Party has called, and continues to call, for the implementation of the Death Penalty against criminals, drug traffickers, and traffickers in children and women. By this logic, the chairman of the Republican Party, by expressing the position of the party he leads, would be calling for his own capital punishment. The socialists’ intrigues are intended to damage the Republican Party in the upcoming local elections. They rely on the principle: “Slander, slander, and something will stick.” But this logic will not prevail. The Republican Party and its chairman will respond to the Socialist Party’s slander through institutional channels.

New facts about the “Avdyli” case The evidence that has kept former commissioner Dritan Avdyli in prison will not escape the attention of the Prosecutor General’s Office either. Various sources, some of them within the Tirana Prosecutor’s Office, said yesterday at midday that “investigators have managed to establish that Vangjel Kosta was not at home on the night Erieta Avdyli disappeared,” adding that on March 31 Vangjel Kosta met with Tirana Chief Prosecutor Thoma Jano. Page 7

Scandal Solis, 300 illegal migrants heading to Greece Page 13

The Bank buys dollars on the foreign-exchange market Page 11

Gazmend Braka is followed by the fate of Zani Çaushi Page 9

Leukemia: no medicines and no reliable tests Page 15

The contract, today. The second operator is blocked until 2002 “Cosmote has finally managed to defeat our government officials, who were tasked with drafting the bilateral contract for the sale of the Albanian company Albania Mobil Communication (AMC). The latest concession we have been forced to make, among the concessions reported in the press recently, is the granting of an additional two-year mobile-phone market exclusivity period to Cosmote. In short, their demand not to license a second operator until 2002 has been met.” Page 2

The inner circle was wiretapped. 4,500 phone calls reveal the secret Switzerland sounds the alarm. Drug trafficking is organized exclusively by Albanians, so give us information and investigative access so that the kingpins of this traffic can be arrested. This was more or less the gist of a phone call that came from Switzerland yesterday and set Albanian prosecutors in motion. According to the investigator, Albanians were organizing the drug-distribution network in Switzerland. Page 5

Serbs and Montenegrins built 1,500 m from the Albanian border