EDITORIAL The December movement - a test of Albanian morality December 8 marks the beginning of free existence for Albanians. This date, born on the shoulders of the students and their dreams, stands out among all the other commemorated dates of the nation, because it is the date of people's return to freedom, to their personality, to the possession of rights. As such, it carries within it the essence of a qualitative organism according to the idea that in the individual, as in the being that creates society. Without this component, that democratic movement would one day fade and would have been replaced by later dates. The break with communism was not simply an act of protest or liberation from evil. For Albanians it remains as the moment of the Albanian people's awareness and as an alternative belief for the students who promoted that break. Beginning with the students, democracy at the same time achieved both longevity and trust in all generations. The December movement is the truest test in the history of Albanian morality and at the same time the sign and subconscious of the nation that emerged from within that it belonged to the West and not to the East, that it belonged to the great movement of ideas and not to the dogmas of ideological canons. In communist Albania there was dissent, but it was closed off and crushed in prisons. Under communist repression it was transformed into a closed but living consciousness. This was clearly demonstrated by the entire chronicle of the events that unfolded over four days in Qyteti Studenti. In such a short time it managed to intensify enough to create, together with the first students, the opposition party, the Democratic Party, in order to legitimize political pluralism in Albania forever. However, the opposition of that time and the December movement tried to turn the communist leaders of those days into the central figures, presenting it as a sign of communist liberalism while avoiding its true source, the democratic feelings of the students, the dissent of the time that embodied all the hatred the people had gathered toward that system. The December movement had no point of contact with the course of the 50-year logic of communism. It was the forceful clash, the collision that sanctioned the beginning of Albanian political moderation and at the same time made possible the institutional removal of the totalitarian regime in Albania.

INTERVIEW WITH Mr. AZEM HAJDARI Read on page 3

Minutes of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PPSH, dated 2 and 3 July 1974

At Rinas airport he is received by President of the Republic Sali Berisha At the invitation of the President of the Republic Sali Berisha, yesterday the Bulgarian President, Zhelju Zhelev, arrived in Tirana for an official visit. On this two-day visit, President Zhelev is accompanied by his wife, as well as by a group of Bulgarian parliamentarians and businessmen. This is the second visit of the Albanian President to Albania, after that of 1 February 1993, when the treaty of friendship and cooperation was signed between the two countries. One year later, in April 1994, President Berisha visited Bulgaria, a visit during which the agreement on the protection and promotion of investments and the agreement on economic-trade cooperation were signed. The visit of the Bulgarian President takes place in the new situation created in the Balkans after the Dayton agreement. During his two-day stay, one of the main topics of the talks is expected to be the joint declaration of the four states Albania, Turkey, Bulgaria and Macedonia on the East-West corridor, where further work on its concretization will be discussed. Zhelju Zhelev, one of the main protagonists of the turn to the East, is among the most important figures to have arrived in Albania in recent times. To welcome the President of Bulgaria at Rinas airport was the President of the Republic, Sali Berisha. Present was also the Ambassador of Bulgaria in Tirana, Stefan Naumov. President Berisha received Bulgarian President Zhelju Zhelev

Talk on the start of consideration of the Kosovo issue U.S. Secretary of State Christopher will discuss with the leader of the Albanians of Kosovo ways to begin considering the Kosovo issue , according to Voice of America radio today, citing a State Department official. A State Department official told Voice of America that Mr. Christopher will reiterate to Dr. Rugova the concern of the United States regarding the situation in Kosovo, the radio said in its Albanian-language program. The leader of the Albanians of Kosovo, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, will come to Washington. He met this morning with senior State Department officials ahead of the meeting he will have with Secretary of State Christopher. Before meeting Mr. Christopher, Rugova will meet with the Republican senator who is also presidential candidate Dole, who is known as one of the strongest supporters of the Albanian cause in the U.S. Congress. Balkan affairs observers believe that after the peace agreement in Bosnia and the deployment of NATO forces there, conditions may have been created for the start of dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. Dr. Rugova, like the President of Albania Sali Berisha, has repeated the Dayton agreement on the non-inclusion of Kosovo does not include the Kosovo issue. The Albanian leader continues to insist that the Balkans cannot be made stable without examining the Kosovo issue. This will be the second meeting within 6 months between Secretary of State Christopher and Dr. Ibrahim Rugova.

The deputy chairman of the PS and former candidate-clown for president Namik Dokle declared yesterday in “KJ” that Solana's election at the head of NATO is one more chance for Albania's entry into NATO . He says that Solana is one of the politicians I have valued most... leaving in the shadow the other side of the medal, Solana's assessments of Dokle and the PSSH. Indeed, not without reason, he says “I have valued” in the first person and not in the name of his party. And here it is not known whether this is as a sign of “dissent” against the rest of the PS leadership and its yesterday's statements, or whether he has been “instructed” by the “superiors” to do pro-Western demagoguery. If Dokle has not once again been cast in the role of clown as in '91, then one must truly believe that he has definitively decided to abandon not only his party but also himself. This is because there is no other way to explain this attitude of his when everyone has heard and read in “ZP” those dozens and dozens of statements against Albania's membership in NATO, as well as other obsessive statements by Ilir Humi with regard to the position toward the USA and the West, made by the PS and indeed by Dokle himself. NDREKE GJINI

From the press statement of the Albanian President Sali Berisha and the Bulgarian one Zhelju Zhelev President Berisha yesterday received the President of Bulgaria, Zhelju Zhelev, who arrived yesterday in Tirana for a two-day visit. The deepening of Albanian-Bulgarian and regional cooperation, in the light of the new situation created after Dayton, and the determination to build the west-east road corridor are the topics of the 45-minute conversation between the two presidents. We will coordinate actions for the deepening of cooperation through e (Continues on page 2)

A few days ago, a PS committee gathered Albanian economists who had come as PS members in the city of Korçë... PS. starts.. collecting “taxes” It is an order from the center A few days ago, a PS committee gathered Albanian economists who had come as PS members in the city of Korçë. It was the biology teacher, one of the leaders of the local PS named Cema, who asked those present that each of them contribute 100,000 new lek for the election campaign account of the “bogeyman”. Cema calls such a sum “quite modest.” Some call it the bitterness of the socialist chairman at a time when his party's propaganda makes noise about the impoverishment of people and the “obvious frustrations” of the PS's non-privileged members. Thus, the fault of the “non-privileged” is that they are forced to pay taxes for the party of the “privileged”, and when 100,000 lek are considered a very modest sum for anyone looking at taxes, the socialists will put the burden on all those who are not PS sympathizers and who of course do not intend to campaign in order to bring such a party to power. E.P.

In The days when the Dictatorship was overthrown

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