Gjinushi and Çeka should follow the same dignified path out of politics as Nano Voices are growing within the PS parliamentary group calling for Gjinushi to step down. Possible candidates to replace him are Limoz Dizdari and Zihni Beqiri ON PAGE 3

By Sami NEZA The main problem for Albanians today is not improving the way the country is governed, but changing it completely. It is no longer a question of removing the Minister of the Interior or punishing the Minister of Privatization. What Albanians face today is a frightening government, a coalition that is itself frighteningly large, unacceptable even to the most ordinary voters in that coalition, right up to the leader of the 29 June election campaign. The absence of such a vote does not so much affirm Fatos Nano’s right to kick his party and government colleagues around as it does his colleagues’ right to do the same to Fatos, given what he brought to governance in Albania after more than a year of preparation. Relations between the Socialists and their coalition partners have never been, and cannot be, fair relations founded on the belief that governance should be improved. They are relations based on interests, playing out among the new and old clans of this party to perfect smuggling, corruption and nepotism, and make them as unreadable as possible to the public. Whenever they speak out against one another, the reason lies precisely in the savage Byzantine infighting within the left, and has nothing to do with its progress toward the Western left. But while government passing from one seat to another appears to be an opportunity for plunder, a new responsibility falls to other people and other political forces. They can no longer play only the role of opposition to a government that has at least been penalized by its own former Prime Minister, by former ministers and former prefects appointed by this coalition—and the penalties may well keep growing. The Socialists and their allies have also been told that they came to power with the help of the regional mafia and have tried to install it in the senior state administration; they have been told that the continuation of 29 June was the product of an armed uprising; they have been called corruptors, smugglers, inept, fanatics, people incapable of building a state, apathetic, clan-based, Pontius Pilates, vote thieves and power thieves, clientelists, coup plotters, amorphous. For most of these accusations, in a normal state the prosecutor’s office would have opened criminal cases against the government and governing coalition. If we add some of the accusations made by the occasional opposition, and those not yet voiced by the parties in government concerning the criminalization of the state, political killings and imprisonment, organized crime, drug and migrant trafficking, collaboration with gangs, the lack of law and order, and so on, then nothing remains of what a government should be, or of the moral standards a large political group encompassing the entire Albanian left should have. Now, after a long silence within the left and the opposition’s exemplary restraint in not getting involved, there can no longer be any doubt about improving Albanian governance or the left-wing coalition. The Socialists and their allies are no longer capable of governing. Their moral mandate has expired, along with their ability to manipulate governance. Nano can no longer gather votes or gangs to retake control of the government, just as the current government officials are incapable of filling all the holes dug by their former leader. Given the possibilities of clan feuds, pressure from the mafia not to relinquish their positions of power, and the traffic lights and vices of a corrupt administration, Albania will continue to languish under the same order. The country of the Albanians must emerge from the life of the left-wing coalition, with which they have dressed one another, and from all the fear they inspire when one thinks that all this rabble of people has taken over the head of the Albanian state.

The former Prefect accuses the PS’s anti-dialogue clans of the destruction and burning of Shkodër The former Prefect of Shkodër refuses the deputy minister’s post offered to him to silence him and declares that he is severing ties with the current government ON PAGE 2

Pollo takes part in the meeting of the EDU Steering Committee

Berisha meets with the British Ambassador in Tirana, Stefen Nesh ON PAGE 3

After the Reçak massacre, 15,000 Albanian civilians have been displaced Heavy Serbian artillery shelling continued throughout yesterday in the Mitrovica region and, according to the latest reports, the fiercest fighting has been concentrated in the village of Vaganicë. More than 15,000 Albanian civilians have been displaced from their homes, while hundreds more have been captured and terrorized by Serbian forces, reports say. ON PAGE 6

The people of Vlora remember very well that in June ’97 the current Finance Minister, Anastas Angjeli, was the theoretician who explained Nano’s promise ON PAGE 2

Yesterday in Elbasan, Interior Minister Petro Koçi admitted that the police had used violence against innocent citizens. But, he said, this violence serves the Socialist Party, and the police will continue to implement its directives. The chief of police went on ... ON PAGE 2

Today, 133 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 its successor in the crime that shook the entire Albanian world. The government of former communists, which leaves the criminals who killed the December Leader free and undisturbed, shows Albanians that they have been and remain on the side of the killers, who have names and identities but are not touched by those in power. Democrats and all Albanians who loved and honored Azem Hajdari can in no way tolerate this fact. The government must either capture the criminals and bring them to justice, or publicly declare that it itself committed the murder of Azem Hajdari.

A retrial in the Nano case requires new evidence, which is lacking Before taking on the defense of their client, convicted as a thief by all three levels of the courts, Fatos Nano’s former lawyers should resign from the positions they hold ON PAGE 4

Former Parliament Speaker Pjetër Arbnori comments on the departure of the Socialist leader ON PAGE 3

Mr. President, step onto the national arena In this atmosphere, so threatening to the integrity of our state, when Belgrade’s fundamentalism is officially announcing military intervention against us, and the genocide against our compatriots has shaken international opinion, our politicians are taking their places alongside one another to find the position the situation demands. But where is the father of the nation, the President of Albania? As much as he knows better than anyone else how he came to the throne, it is all the more important for him to feel that he is under an obligation. ON PAGE 3

Yesterday, at one of Tirana’s eight-year schools

13 days on hunger strike at Prison 313 ON PAGE 4

Celibashi: This is a government of clans ON PAGE 4

103,000 people will be left unemployed ON PAGE 5