Washington. The U.S. Information Agency and the Office of the White House Press Secretary announce that the United States has signed two new bilateral investment treaties with the Republic of Albania and the Republic of Latvia. President Bill Clinton, these sources emphasize, welcomed the signing of these treaties and stated: “These bilateral investment treaties lay a strong foundation for trade and investment with select democracies undergoing reform in Central and Eastern Europe. They are a step forward toward integrating Europe’s new democracies into an expanding democratic community. American and Eastern European businesses will benefit equally from increased business.” Ambassador Miki Kantor stated that these treaties strengthen a key element of an open investment climate and will serve to strengthen economic ties between the United States and Albania and Latvia. President Berisha’s spokesperson announces: President Berisha welcomed the signing of the bilateral investment treaty between Albania and the United States and stated that he considers it a very important development in the close and friendly cooperation between our two countries. The signing of this treaty, the President assessed, will greatly help attract American investment to Albania, develop the market economy, and integrate the country into the Western world. PRESS AND INFORMATION OFFICE

DUKAGJIN HATA In their efforts to leave the country without a constitution, the Albanian communist leadership has once again carried out a despicable provocation against Albanian democracy and all expectations, openly demonstrating its determination to rehabilitate the past at any cost and to submit to no kind of reform. In open defiance of the existing constitutional laws, it set up a puppet commission to draft the Constitution and entrusted this task to Mr. Luan Omari, Enver Hoxha’s chief constitutional expert, the legitimate authority behind the infamous 1976 Constitution—the criminal authority Europe has known during this century. For the constitution of the 2000s, the socialist leadership, 18 years after Enverism, chose an academic jurist and no one else. This is a grave provocation against Albanian democracy, but it is also a dark omen, first and foremost for the Socialist Party, its electorate, and those hundreds of thousands of honest people who, moved by human kindness, have wanted to believe at least a little in the self-reform of the Albanian social-communists. It would be neither objective nor honest to describe you, Mr. Omari, as merely close to the Dictator: you were also the right-hand man in his constitutional crimes and in the dictatorship as a whole. Dictatorships are a universal crime. They are undoubtedly based on laws and constitutions that condemn the whole of society. In these systems, individuals are pursued, persecuted, sentenced, or killed whenever they try to exercise their fundamental freedoms and rights. Never before seen on this scale in Europe, this was the fate of Albanians during the Hoxhaist dictatorship. Prisons, concentration camps, internments, the total trampling of human dignity, and the destruction of human values—all these have been and remain its most striking features. In this infernal process, prosecutors, investigators, Sigurimi agents, and judges sentenced hundreds and thousands of innocent people, relying on absurd laws erected on total injustice over roughly 50 years of communism, laws based on the Hoxhaist Constitution, whose Article 2 declared Albania a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, thereby legitimizing violence, terror, and the rule of a minority over the majority. You, Mr. Omari, are the author of this article, and whenever the authorities sometimes challenged such a thing in a half-hearted way, you attacked them with a fanaticism of Leninism, and anyone who uttered even a word against it faced the red guillotine. You must know that hundreds and thousands of others were killed in the prisons of Albania, because leaving Albania, under the Hoxhaist constitution, was considered treason. Likewise, hundreds and thousands of others were sentenced or imprisoned for their free religious belief, because the manifesto you drafted declared Albania an atheist state. Thousands more died of disease and hunger because this constitution lay at the heart of Albania’s total isolation. A verse that could serve as a shameful relic said: “The Constitution has articles, like cartridges on a bandolier.” These two macabre lines alone show that its articles were murderous and inflicted wounds on the body of society and on the individual. Has Article 28, for example, not opened terrible wounds? It prohibited by law “the granting of concessions, the creation of foreign or joint companies and other economic and financial institutions, with monopolies and with capitalist, bourgeois, and revisionist states, and the taking of loans from them”—an article that turned the country into a self-isolated bunker of Albanian Stalinism. By accepting the task of drafting the new constitution assigned to you by the Albanian socialist leadership, you, Mr. Omari, and those who Of course, it would be naive and absurd to believe that you accept this task as an act of conscience for what you wrote 20 years ago. No, Mr. Omari. You do not accept it for that reason; you accept it because it is entrusted to you by precisely those who massacred Kavaja and Shkodra, Fushë-Arrëz, Laç, Pogradec, Fier, and Korçë; those who plundered this country’s wealth; those who, together with you, are instruments of the monstrous Enverian crime; those who today abuse human compassion and the space created by democracy and freedom. The purpose of choosing Mr. Omari to draft the new constitution is not only that, on an illegal and unconstitutional commission, only people like Mr. Omari could be involved, since someone else of the same kind could also have been found. The real purpose is sinister and extremely dangerous. Nor does it lie in the idea of rehabilitating a scholar who, intentionally or otherwise, drafted a criminal manifesto. No, above all, it consists in imposing collective amnesia, which has proved fatal in the history of various nations and countries; it lies in defending the joint work you carried out, which gave rise to dictatorship; it lies in the desperate attempt to … my accusation in 1972, nor against the Socialist Party, its electorate, or those hundreds of thousands of honest people who, guided by human kindness, wanted to believe at least a little in the old-fashioned femininity of Albanian social communism. It would be objective neither fair to hold Luan Omari solely responsible for drafting the 1976 Constitution. Full and direct responsibility lies with the dictator Hoxha, the Political Bureau, that criminal gang that carried out his orders. But I think there will not be a court in the world that, in a trial for Albanian genocide, would not also find Mr. Luan Omari guilty. Not as one of the people with… … to fragment Albania and establish Omari, are the author of this article, and whenever anyone else has dared to oppose such a thing, even in a half-hearted voice, you have attacked them with unparalleled fanaticism. During those dark years, hundreds of thousands of Albanians were punished for free thought and free speech, because Article 3 of that constitution, whose architect you were, stipulated that the Party of Labour of Albania was the vanguard of the working class, the sole political force of the state and society, and declared Marxism-L… the ruling ideology. … with the capitalist, bourgeois, and revisionist states and the assumption of obligations from them,” which turned the country into an isolated a new constitution, assigned standing behind you think you can wash your hands like Pilate and act like the other Albanian Pilates, who yesterday, at the beginning of the democratic processes, entrusted you with the Helsinki Committee and sent Aranit Çela to Strasbourg for Human Rights, while today these same wretched Pilates are tasking you, as a puppet, with drafting a constitution. … establishing collective amnesia, proven fatal in the history of various nations and countries, lies in the collaborative deeds you have committed and in what sustains the dictatorship; it lies in the desperate effort to return to power once again, with or without the help of others—the successors of Enver or Dushan. Mr. Omari, we have no intention of launching personal attacks, but we remind you that Albanian justice has not yet had its say on the genocide of Enver Hoxha and his clan. It has been delayed, but it will not forget.

Speech by Mr. Ali Spahia at the OSCE meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Vienna, January 12–13, 1995 . On January 13, the second day of the work of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Standing Committee, during the debate on the report of the delegation led by the President of the Parliamentary Assembly, Frank Swaalen, and Vice-Presidents Willy Wimmer and Jan Carnorgsky, which had visited Belgrade and Prishtina, the head of the Albanian delegation at this meeting, Mr. Ali Spahia, made the following statement, which he requested be (Continued on page 2) … Former demonstrators and representatives of various parties took part, as did representatives of the organizations “13 dhjetori” and “2 prilli,” the association of former political prisoners, the Chairman of the District Council, and the Mayor. One of those who spoke was Kastriot Haxhi, one of the … … The Communists said then that nothing had happened, that it was only a slander by imperialism and … … Arbitol—from the day the first demonstration took place in Albania, the demonstration to remove Stalin’s bust in the city of Shkodra. (Continued on page 2)

Asked to comment on reports published in several far-left newspapers and irresponsibly circulated by senior PS leaders concerning an alleged no-confidence motion by PD deputies against Prime Minister Meksi and the possibility that the President of the Republic might appoint another prime minister, even a socialist, the spokesperson for the President of the Republic said that he considers these reports entirely untrue and fabrications of a sick imagination. Prime Minister Meksi and his Cabinet enjoy the full support and confidence of the President of the Republic. However, the President’s spokesperson emphasized, this disinformation is being invented and carefully spread at a time when Meksi’s Government, Parliament, and all the institutions of the democratic state are engaged in carrying out a decisive stage of economic reform, namely the distribution of vouchers and their use in mass privatization—a process through which our society is breaking with its communist past and turning hundreds of thousands of Albanians into owners of their national wealth. This will certainly be a historic achievement for the democratic forces and an irreparable blow to the anti-reform forces in Albania. The imagined no-confidence motion by PD deputies against the Meksi Cabinet, together with the absurd and unconstitutional idea of President Berisha appointing a prime minister from the socialist minority, also reflect the serious crisis of personality of those whom sick careerism drives into the mire of banal street gossip.

Yesterday, a rally was held in Shkodra to mark the fifth anniversary of the first anti-communist demonstrations, during which Stalin’s bust was toppled. Former demonstrators took part, along with representatives of various parties, the Mayor. One of those who spoke was Kastrjot Haxhi, one of the organizers of the demonstration. At the end, the Chairman of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly, Pieter Arbnori, also spoke. “Five years have passed,” Mr. Arbnori said, “since was only a slander by imperialism and by … (Continued on page 2)

Yesterday at the Tirana District Court: the Arsidi trial —Arsidi was brought to Albania for the first time, as emerges from the questioning of Mr. Pluton Shyti, former commercial counselor at the Albanian Embassy in Paris; from the questioning of Mr. Shane Korbeci, former minister in the Nano Cabinet; from the questioning of Mr. Shkelqim Cani; and from Fatos Nano’s own explanations. It was the government of Fatos Nano that brought him, appointing him as that government’s adviser on Albania’s foreign trade. —Ylli Çabiri confirmed, as did the defendant Ilir Hoti, that former Prime Minister V.Ahmeti and Ylli Çabiri met in Brussels. The defendant Ahmeti denied this fact throughout the investigation, but yesterday, in the presence of Mr. Çabiri, he was compelled to acknowledge it for the first time. —Mr. Shkelqim Cani yesterday described in court the discount granted by Tartari and A.Saliu in Arsidi’s favor as irregular and contrary to the National Commercial Bank. — NDREKE GJINI Yesterday there was another witness hearing in the financial scandal case, otherwise known as the Arsidi trial. It was the turn of Platon Shyti, Shane Korbeci, Ylli Çabiri, Shkelqim Cani, Fatos Nano, and Emin Myliu to testify before Çelik and the panel of judges. from the questioning of Mr. Shkelqim Cani; from Fatos Nano’s own explanations; and from the government of Fatos Nano, which appointed him as adviser on … (Continued on page 2)

Our economic note SHPETIM LUKU One of the issues under discussion today is whether a protective policy should be applied to domestic production. The correct answer to this question is linked to the difficult realities of the Albanian economy. If we say that such a policy should be implemented, we must first make sure that it does not protect the country merely for the sake of protection, through a compensatory fiscal system, while meeting the country’s needs for … And since the branch of the Albanian economy that produces industrial goods is agriculture, the dilemma above is primarily relevant to this sector. In fact, our traders also import agricultural and livestock products comparable to those produced in Albania. Applying a differentiated fiscal policy in order to curb imports of these products would depend on two factors: first—as we said above—meeting demand through protected Albanian production; and second, the price at which this production reaches the market. Albanian agriculture, at least so far, has not managed to produce goods that can compete with imports on a scale sufficient to meet market demand. This means that a fully-fledged protectionist policy cannot be applied in agriculture. Nevertheless, complaints are often heard from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food about the negative effect the fiscal system has on domestic production. A typical example is eggs, where a paradox is evident: imported eggs arrive and are sold on the market at a lower price than those produced here. We call this a paradox because taxation has a substantial effect on this product, that is, because the fiscal system is inefficient. But we are not arguing that Albanian production should be protected in such a way that … … it is deprived of fair and honest competition,” says Minister Hasan Halili. According to him, that would turn protectionist policy into a discriminatory policy that would erode the values of competition. Such a thing is unacceptable today, when competition prevails and is characteristic in every segment of the system. Nevertheless, what is important to emphasize is that the fiscal system must be designed to achieve all the objectives it serves in reality. That means both protection, to the extent deemed necessary, for domestic production, and the allowance of competition that benefits the market.

Yesterday morning, in one of the premises of the Court of Cassation, the president of this court, Mr. Zef Brozi, held a press conference. I would like to make my final position clear and perhaps others, Mr. Brozi, in his speech. I denounce the statement circulated outside the Court of Cassation and signed by judges of the Court of Cassation. I invite my opponents to discuss the matter at a round table on TV. Let us acknowledge things publicly and all contribute to the fight against evil and to building what is good. I am aware of the struggle for equal justice in accordance with the law. I am calm in the face of … (Continued on page 2)

Cartoon: fists raised against human figures, with the inscription “DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT,” and the years 1976 and 1995.

The Academics’ Concern If our academics did not have the courage of a Sakharov to confront the dictatorship, let them at least have today the honesty of an ordinary person and ask the homeland for forgiveness.