Vranicki: I have not failed; I’ll return on Monday. Opposition: With the DP law, we are out of the elections. Today, the parties meet with Fino Fatos Nano is not going to Vlora. The committees meet: “The struggle continues; we are waiting for the opposition.” Vranicki leaves Albania and the shadow of war Page 5

— ALFRED PEZA — When Vranicki told reporters yesterday that, in the current crisis, Albanian politics had failed, not the OSCE, he was essentially right. As he left in his plane, perhaps never to return to the scene of his diplomatic mission, he understood that the causes of the crisis were different from those he had stated, and that in Albanian politics the biggest joke is keeping one’s word. The Chancellor left Albania divided, just as he had found it in March, when Berisha and the parties signed the agreement that undermined the country’s future. On March 9, Albania urgently needed an agreement between the sides. The state had disappeared within a few hours and total anarchy had taken its place. At that moment, the man who had stood above it all for the past five years—Berisha—appeared on the scene. Anyone who had known the President even slightly, and not merely as a politician, must have been astonished to see that on that day he was open to comments and suggestions and openly accepted criticism. Berisha was using such a peaceful tone with his opponents for only the second time since being elected president. The first was at his press conference on November 6, 1994, when his constitutional project failed disastrously. He accepted moderation on March 9 of this year, while the others abandoned radicalism. At that moment, none of the political parties asked to add further points to the draft agreement. Although he was at the most difficult moment of his life, when, it is said, he had already prepared the text of his resignation, Berisha managed to remain consistent in understanding and manipulating the opposition’s psychology. Faced with a bull tamed by fear of war and weapons, Berisha knew how to take advantage of his opponent’s retreat. He played the early-election card, waving in the air the celebrated banner of national reconciliation. What the opposition had struggled for to the point of losing faith had happened. So that it would not seem like a mere mirage, everyone rushed to sign the agreement within minutes, without taking much care to read its text. The amateurism and indecision of that moment proved fatal for us. To make an agreement consciously, one must be a gentleman. And when such people are missing from the top of Albanian politics, this deficiency is made up for by more than simply putting everything down on paper. That is what did not happen with the March 9 pact. The document did not say a word about what would be done with the structures that had brought about these consequences, although it did remember to specify a day of mourning for the victims. SHIK, the police and KTV were not mentioned, nor was the status of the Parliament elected through the stolen vote of May 26; nothing was said either about the President elected under a state of emergency. Not a word about the law that led to May 26, nor about the conditions that would make him the guarantor of the implementation of the formula called magical. Before work began on implementing the agreement’s points, Berisha had already started making his own calculations to undo it, taking advantage precisely of the vacuum in its drafting. In this game, the opposition itself helped him more than anyone else. If it did not know what to do in those golden minutes, it will not be the only one that has to suffer. A government of national unity is the only thing that can save Albania from this crisis, not a special OSCE mission. He left and ...

Yesterday, a secret meeting of seven parties to agree on a common position The opposition may withdraw from the elections. Berisha’s signature has led the seven Albanian opposition parties to declare last night that they will not cross the threshold into the elections, submitting to the law passed by the DP parliament. In a secret location, the leaders of the seven parties signed, one after another, a pact not to take part in the elections at the end of June. At 2:00 p.m., the PS, PSD, PAD, PBK, PBDNJ, PDD and the newly established Movement for Democracy Party held a joint meeting, seeking finally to arrive at a common position and form a bloc on the issue of the elections. “The parties reaffirmed their will not to take part in the elections, since they consider Parliament’s approval of the DP law, followed by its promulgation by Berisha, an arbitrary act,” one of the politicians present at the “top secret” meeting of Albanian opposition figures told KJ last night. The opposition’s efforts to take control of the game in the final minutes of the battle began yesterday morning, when its leaders Nano, Dokle, Majko, Mejdani, Ceka, Gjinushi, Apostoli and Milo held a meeting at the Socialist headquarters. “We discussed the law and the possible ways we might use it,” Rexhep Mejdani, Secretary General of the PS, told KJ. But, according to Mejdani, “the methods we will use have not yet been fully clarified.” From the PS headquarters, at 2:00 p.m. the opposition leaders met with other opposition leaders at a location suggested by the heads of Balli Kombëtar. Having finally sealed their decision not to enter the elections under the approved law, the parties appointed Dokle, Mehduni and Ceka to go and meet Fino. “We asked the government not to resign, but to continue its struggle to the end,” Ceka said after the meeting, also revealing a condition the opposition had now set for continuing the dialogue: “The government’s law must be the basis for dialogue.” It is also understood that Fino and the three opposition politicians jointly concluded the task of continuing Vranicki’s mission in Albania.

Photo: G. Shkullaku Vranicki yesterday at the Rogner, before leaving Albania