Failure in the elections sparks a crisis within the opposition. Runoff votes in doubt Imami: “The PS is to blame, the dirty compromise between Hajdaraga and Pëllumbi with Berisha” page 3

The Albanian Telegraphic Agency reported yesterday that the spokesperson for the President of the Republic announced that President of the Republic Sali Berisha welcomed President Bill Clinton’s statement concerning the first admissions of former communist countries to the North Atlantic Alliance within the 1999 timeframe. He (Sali Berisha) welcomed these statements as important support for these countries’ efforts to join. ATSH reports that “Berisha has stated that the enlargement of the Alliance means the expansion of security and stability in Europe and the world, and that Albania, as the first former communist country to have applied for membership in this Alliance, is determined to cooperate actively with its member and partner countries in order to meet the criteria for its full membership in NATO.” It is more than understandable to ask why Mr. Berisha made this statement. The question arises because this is his first statement after he boycotted the US national holiday, after he refused to receive at least two envoys of the US administration who wished to visit Albania and meet him, and after the United States Embassy in Albania boycotted the opening of the Albanian Parliament elected in the contested elections of 26 May. This statement by the unknown spokesperson becomes even more interesting if we consider information from well-informed sources in the PD that Berisha called the President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, a communist. But that is not important. The main question is why Berisha has abandoned his previous positions toward America. How is it possible that he made such a flat statement and did not use his former vocabulary? How is it possible that he did not say: “American leadership has been and will continue to be an essential element for European security; the US intends to remain engaged with the continent despite the end of the Cold War; the US continues to promise international and American engagement with the former communist world; America, whatever the circumstances, is a pillar of security and a guarantee of their safe and democratic development.” The Albanian president even “forgets” to mention some of the principles for admission to NATO. He does not even come close to mentioning that one of the principles of membership is civilian and democratic control over the military. A fighter by nature (he comes from a land of fighters, like Tropoja), he sidesteps the principle that disputed ethnic and territorial issues must be resolved peacefully. He pretends to forget that one must be capable of contributing militarily to collective defence and peacekeeping, etc. In truth, the spokesperson’s account of what Berisha said seems to carry another message: an attempt to rekindle reconciliation and dialogue with... the liberal Bill Clinton, even if he is ... the liberal Bill Clinton, the only enemy left to him within ... Albania. VLADIMIR PRELA

A horse fallen in the middle of Tirana photo R. Tasho I. Meta: The PS Congress influenced the elections page 5 A horse fallen in the middle of Tirana — photo R. Tasho

After all Albanian politicians turned us down, we are sending our request for a telephone line to Strasbourg, hoping that the Council of Europe is committed to intervening to resolve all the crises in the country. With the departure of the observers from Albania, we undertake to continue the mission of monitoring the elections and the fraud in the runoff, naturally if the CoE provides us with telephone number 33375, registered at the Palace of Congresses. In exchange, we offer to sponsor a series of postage stamps featuring a portrait of Mrs Leni Fisher, or a free trip to several chrome mines. We were forced to make our request public after failing to get through to the CoE telephone line in Tirana, which was busy all week. Unidentified sources said the reason for this blockage was the countless phone calls from PD members denouncing election manipulation by the PS.