After the capture of three members of Gaxhai’s gang, Interior Minister Ceka declares: “Berisha and people in the justice system are implicated in crime” — Page 2 After the capture of three members of Gaxhai’s gang, Interior Minister Ceka declares: “The criminals should be hanged” “Berisha and people in the justice system are implicated in crime” Page 2

By AGIM ISAKU They say that, when in December 1924 someone knocked on Prime Minister Fan Noli’s door to tell him that Ahmet Zogu’s troops were approaching Tirana, he was playing the flute. After listening with annoyance to the newcomer, he said, with even greater irritation: How can you fail to understand how divine this music is?! Various analysts say that he, the most cultured prime minister the Albanians have ever had, left precisely because of this detachment from the “mud” in which Albanians themselves lived. A wise saying goes that every comparison limps; nevertheless, it is not difficult to find parallels between what we are living through today and December 1924. Today, too, at the head of the government and the state we have a group of cultured people who seem to want to pursue liberal politics, setting their sights on Europe and on contemporary levels. They are trying to conduct open and transparent politics, aim to reform the party, and say they also know how to play behind-the-scenes politics. Meanwhile, life in Albania, particularly in recent days, has become considerably harder, the cost of living has risen, law and order appear fragile and, according to unofficial statistics, around ten police officers have been killed; crime is all around us, now more sophisticated; the opposition continues to show no desire whatsoever to cooperate; the mud is sticking to us and getting right into our souls. The alarm, which official speeches try to soften, has been sounded by the endless funeral processions making their way to the graves every day. And by the speedboats cutting through the murky waters of life and death. At the same time, no one can deny the dedication of the heads of law and order, Ceka and Legisi; nevertheless, it is commonly said that they are doing nothing. That is the normal logic of assigning responsibility and holding people accountable in a normal state and society, whereas here in Albania things are different; things are not normal, and it does not look as though they will be for a long time. If you sit with officials at various levels, you will hear the office-bureaucracy gossip: so-and-so-a gets along with so-and-so-b and has had three beers with so-and-so-c; he is against this person and therefore cannot be with “us”; so-and-so-a spent three hours at so-and-so-b’s place (the one with the b is more important!) and so-and-so-b (the one with the b is more important!)... A typical office atmosphere—we don’t know what they said... A typical office atmosphere, worse than in the old days (bureaucrats are like that everywhere in the world), as if everything else were going well and all we had left to do was pat ourselves on the back. More or less, this is a dramatic situation: one person is turning the house upside down, and while only one person is working, the others are discussing the ceiling’s arabesques. And after the flute and his masterful translations, Noli gave way to Ahmet Zogu, certainly not the country’s most cultured ruler, but the man who built the first Albanian state. But apparently the French are right when they say: History teaches nobody anything.

Ceremony held for the murdered police officers P. 11

Yesterday, a strange press conference by the leader of the DP P. 5

After the law in parliament, protest by the six-month-olds

Servet Pëllumbi excluded from the leading bodies; all the party chairman’s proposals are approved The National Conference of the Socialists concludes Fatos Nano showed yesterday that he had established undisputed authority in the PS, at a Conference where he also won the eagerly awaited duel with his last opponent in the party, Servet Pëllumbi. Yesterday Nano also took advantage of the impatience of the 560 delegates to the National Conference, who wanted to finish as soon as possible, to sideline the professor and his demands that normal procedures be followed, with secret ballots to decide the issues for which the conference had been convened. P. 3

Family members wept over the body of one of the police officers killed in Ballsh Photo: REUTERS

P. 5 After the law in Parliament, a protest by the six-month conscripts Police stop the hunger strike P. 6 The French press, where UÇK fighters appeared Kosovo’s army emerges from the darkness P. 15 Special feature: Here are the stories of the people running the state The strange Prime Minister P. 16