Education Confederation: This restores our lost dignity ON PAGE 5

January 18, the government’s fourth deception of the men in blue ON PAGE 4

By order of the minister, the portion of moldy wheat is buried ON PAGE 5

among the Socialists. Nano tramples the PS Fatos Nano’s main accusations: “The PS—a party of mafia clans, a party of Pontius Pilates, a degenerate party, a party of politicians from the banana republic, a party of the corrupt, a party of revanchists and abusers of power, a party of primitive and vulgar interests, a party of internal wheeling and dealing, a party of family and petty interests, a party of miserable games and profiteers, a party of people incapable of building a state.” ON PAGE 3 The chairman of the PS resigns, spewing bile and accusing the party he led for eight years. Applause and astonishment among the Socialists

. Fatos Nano’s resignation from the post of chairman of the Socialist Party is one of the progressive events in Albanian politics. His being compelled to leave the post is the result of the commitment of the progressive and democratic forces in the country, both from the ranks of the government and the opposition. Nano’s departure also marks the emergence of a struggle, begun at least two years earlier, between criminalized politics and just politics, fortunately this time with a positive balance for the latter. What has Fatos Nano been in Albanian politics? The foremost man of socialism emerged from Ramiz Alia’s cabinets to take charge of the Socialist Party only on the day its name was changed. [text continues outside the frame] Albanian? The foremost man of the Socialists Coming from a Bloc milieu, he had no commitment to renewing the Socialist Party, much less to building through it a modern left, fully oriented toward the Western left. Within three months, in 1991, he was toppled, and later as prime minister—an episode he had to repeat in 1998, only a year after taking charge of the left-wing government, immediately after the communist rebellion of spring 1997. Fatos Nano’s belated departure has caused great harm not only to the Socialist Party but also to Albanian politics as a whole. Within a few years he managed to install his political clan in most of the leading forums, where it has stifled, and continues to stifle, moderate tendencies within the PS. While presiding over the government, he established the political mafia in power, thereby seriously endangering the entire Albanian society during democratic rule, and seriously threatening the country’s democracy and even its integrity. He was the provocateur of the 1997 crisis, its instigator and, at the same time, its principal actor. His agreement with the gangs brought clear elements of the political mafia into Albania and integrated the national mafia into the offices of the Albanian state. During his government, around 200 million dollars were stolen from Albanian customs; clandestine trafficking was activated, while hundreds of hectares of the country’s wetland were planted with drugs, which were trafficked, and continue to be trafficked, through much of Western Europe, further damaging the country’s image. He also encouraged the trafficking of illegal migrants, rewarding the soldiers of the revolution with a new economy, while a large number of government officials, members of the rebellion’s headquarters, ensured the smuggling operation, turning his government not into an alliance but into an alliance of smugglers, criminals, road producers and the masked men of March 1997. As one of the leading actors in Albanian politics, for a year and a half at the head of the government and also for as long as he was at the head of the party, he ignored anti-communist politics, which he had formulated from the post of prime minister of the country, along with hundreds of others. Fatos Nano bears responsibility for the divisions in the country’s politics. Fatos Nano bears responsibility for divisions in Kosovo’s politics, for building Balkan alliances with the aim of an anti-Albanian solution, for his substantive position in the Kosovo crisis and against Kosovo, for this crisis, and for building and operating lines against Kosovo together with such radical Albanian forces, beginning with the joint meeting and followed by his statements in Crans Montana, Lisbon, etc. Fatos Nano did not resign of his own accord. He was forced to resign. His various statements are nothing but expressions of his political isolation. In fact, it is impossible to say that he was first removed by international factors in Albania and not by his own party. For a year and a half, Albanian Socialists were manipulated and divided by him; the party was held hostage to such an extent that it no longer functioned as a political institution, becoming a club for smugglers, killers, bandits and all its bloodstained elements, operating through airports, ports, customs and across Albania. [Several sentences in the source are garbled or incomplete.] The price for those who stood up for what they believed in was high. The struggle between honest Socialists and the unifying forces of the left came at a great cost. The leadership paid that price through hospitalization after an injury; people were cut, imprisoned, on the orders of the anti-Albanian cliques and clans within the Socialist Party and the left-wing government. Fatos Nano is the prime minister of political attacks and killings. But Nano’s departure from the party leadership does not mean that his shadow will not remain over the heads of the people in this party’s leadership forums for a long time. Its political climate is soaked in Albanian communism; [the following passage is garbled in the source]. The Socialists who fill Nano’s place must uproot his roots within the party.

Berisha reacts with indifference to the departure of the chairman of the Socialist Party

Whoever is elected to head the PS, we will engage in dialogue with him, the chairman of the PD declared ON PAGE 3

Fatos Nano, addressing the people gathered before the General Steering Committee, could not find, on any occasion, a mistake in his eight-year activity as chairman of the Socialist Party. While unleashing a torrent of insults against the Socialist Party, its forums and structures, which he had led since the fall of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship, Nano found no occasion to engage in any self-criticism about his own activity. Nano, just as he did three years earlier in Bença prison, did not spare the party his vocabulary of insults. When in ’96 they took the party of the pebbles away from the PS and his rivals within the party came out on Berisha’s side, now Nano does not hesitate to call the PS a party of mafia clans, and his political rivals politicians of a republic of gangs. Nano has been lavish with insults in his attitude toward the PS, but has not admitted even the smallest mistake. Nano, just like Enver Hoxha once did, also accuses the international community of having opposed his tenure as head of government and, most recently, as head of the PS. From Nano’s speech yesterday it was very clear that, for the PS’s eight years of activity, Nano is ready to blame even Haliti (the loyal guard at the PS headquarters), but never himself.

Opposition leaders do not consider Nano’s departure from the leadership of the PS a surprise, but an expected development dictated by the failure of his policy The continuation of dialogue between the government and the opposition, a responsible policy on the national question, and the definitive departure from politics of those who fuel conflict are the new political climate that opposition leaders foresee after Nano’s departure also from the leadership of the PS ON PAGE 3

The head of the World Bank mission, prey to the capital’s gangs The head of the World Bank office in Albania, Karlos Elbirt, was robbed on Tuesday by people who, as is always the case in such incidents, remain unidentified. The incident took place in Avni Rustemi Square, only 200 metres from the Ministry of Public Order, at around 19:00. According to witnesses at the scene, the armed bandits managed to take the car belonging to the head of the World Bank mission in Tirana, and then flee in an unknown direction. Still according to witnesses, the perpetrators, who drove off in Elbirt’s luxury SUV, headed toward the capital’s Police Station No. 1, very close to where the robbery took place. The robbery at one of the capital’s most exposed locations is part of a series of high-profile thefts targeting Western officials and diplomats in Tirana, who have often fallen victim to masked and unmasked bandits alike. These incidents have been so frequent that even MAPE military personnel have been robbed; they came to Tirana to train the Albanian police in fighting crime. The robbery of Elbirt’s car in the middle of Tirana is further proof that crime feels increasingly secure in Albania and that restoring public order, despite the Majko government’s grand promises, remains far beyond the hopes of Albanians.

Today, 131 days since the murder of the December Leader Every day that passes since the murder of Azem Hajdari, the symbol of democracy and pluralism, proves the involvement of Fatos Nano’s government and his successor in the crime that shocked the entire Albanian world. The government of the former Albanian state, established by former communists, who leave free and unpunished the criminals who took the life of the December Leader, shows Albanians that they have been and remain on the side of the murderers, who have names and identities but are untouched by those in power. Democrats and all Albanians who loved and honoured Azem Hajdari cannot tolerate this fact under any circumstances. The government must either capture the criminals and bring them to justice, or publicly declare that it itself committed the murder of Azem Hajdari. Portrait of Azem Hajdari

Berisha calls on the United States to save two million Albanians from Serbian barbarity The chairman of the PD welcomes the positions of Pope John Paul II, Prime Minister D’Alema, and Italian opposition leader Berlusconi on resolving the tragedy in Kosovo ON PAGE 2

The southern areas hit by the communist rebellion are at the center of the Democrats’ attention In implementation of the decision taken by the leadership of the DP to improve the organizational functioning of the DP’s structures, four working groups have been set up for the districts of Korçë, Berat, Fier and Vlorë, and these days they are carrying out intensive activities. The groups that have been established are working. ON PAGE 2

Dialogue with everyone, but an alliance with the Albanian right The chairman of the DP, Prof. Dr. Sali Berisha, during a press conference held yesterday in Tirana, accompanied by the party’s Secretary General, Dr. Ridvan Bode, and the Deputy Chairwoman of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly, Ms. Jozefina Topalli, presented the Democrats’ new platform for 1999. ON PAGE 2