The OSCE envoy arrives amid attacks by the DP. Vranicki meets the parties and confirms his programme: “I will go to Vlora and Shkodër” The pyramid-scheme bosses disappear. Only Sudja returns to her cell. The prosecution resumes its investigations The OSCE envoy arrives amid attacks by the DP. Vranicki meets the parties and confirms his programme: “I will go to Vlora and Shkodër” Berisha at the Presidency, Vranicki in Vlora The pyramid-scheme bosses disappear. Only Sudja returns to her cell. The prosecution resumes its investigations Page 3

The cross of the Albanian Democrats was placed yesterday on the back of the senior OSCE representative, Franc Vranicki. After the committees of the South and the factionalists within the party, Berisha and Shehu have now set their sights on the head of the former Austrian chancellor, who has already received the first curses from the DP and the pro-government press. As Franc Vranicki was getting off the plane yesterday morning at Rinas airport for the third time in just a few days, Berisha’s party issued a statement accusing the foreign politician of nothing less than deviating from the charter of the organization he represents, of being tendentious in his contacts with the “rebels” of the South, and of sidelining the “legitimate institutions of the Albanian state”. Excessive attention to the committees and indifference toward the president are therefore the charges that the DP wants to read out to the European who is currently most involved in resolving the Albanian tangle. Vranicki ignored the attacks made by the Democrats yesterday. He contacted Berisha and the Democratic Party, and adopted a moderate tone in his other meetings. But he stated that he had no intention of changing his strategy for resolving the crisis. This is also the only response he has given to the DP’s harsh reaction. The DP’s animosity toward Vranicki has primarily to do with the great turmoil engulfing the structures of a party that has lost almost all international support. The angry reaction toward a figure who only a year ago was considered a friend of Albanian democracy is proof that the DP is taking badly the fact that, over the past two months, foreign policy toward the country’s ruling class has been reshaped from the ground up. Vranicki has fallen “victim” to this rather ill-considered reaction, but he is not its only target. The fact that the former chancellor has come to the Albanian crisis under the OSCE banner is enough to revive in Berisha, Arbnori and Shehu the reflexes of those times when the organization in question was attacked head-on for alleged bias in its stance on the elections and expelled from monitoring the local elections last October. Even now, when we will have to go to the polls again, the OSCE—the only European body specialized in observing them—is being kept out of a mission everyone agrees on. While the US declares its full confidence in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and in its own representative for Albania, Berisha tells a Turkish delegation that the Council of Europe will be responsible for observing the elections! Attacking a European official at a time when the international community is more present than ever on Albanian soil constitutes an open attempt at diversion. The DP is still the most powerful party on the Albanian political scene. With 50% of the executive and 90% of parliament, the president’s party ought to show at least some restraint in its positions, despite its internal troubles; those positions are now harming us all. The DP must have understood that not every statement made in German now resembles messages from Minister Shpranger. K.J

The OSCE Special Envoy for Albania, Franc Vranicki Photo: G.Shkullaku

Let the process of establishing responsibility begin Page 6

A false revolt orchestrated by Berisha Pages 4, 6

“Prodi’s reception in Vlora, a set-up” Page 4