The LDK faces pressure from abroad and an internal vacuum caused by Rugova’s absence. The UÇK hesitates to lower the flag of war, for fear of losing influence The transition out of the phase of pride in uniforms seems to have occurred after the transfer of Thaqi’s provisional government from a peripheral neighborhood of Prishtina to the city center. Mr. Thaqi and his people initially settled in the Taslikne neighborhood of Kosovo’s capital, but then moved their headquarters to Prishtina’s main shopping street. Uniforms are absent from the provisional government headquarters, and there are very few traces of the former war. The checks at the entrance are not very strict, and all the guards and bodyguards are civilians, although it is easy to tell that they have only recently started wearing their new clothes, which seem to fit awkwardly at the collar. ON PAGE 7 Thaqi Government headquarters in Prishtina

Crime in Albania is growing every day to the proportions of a national threat, while the current government has made no serious effort to stop crime on its own. The high level of murders, shootings, robberies and hideouts, as well as trafficking, smuggling and corruption, are creating for Albania boundaries separating it from Europe, stability, democracy and development over time—even from the Balkan region. In recent days, the Sarajevo declaration cited Albania as an unsuitable country for receiving money and serious investment, a country unable to provide the rule of law and order needed to support development programs. It also pointed to the country’s greatest loss: its re-isolation, now not for ideological reasons but for political reasons, consisting of the preservation of the mafia in the government and other state institutions. The recent murders in Tirana took place only a few meters from the police directorate, while the Tirana director once again expresses the state’s indifference to such macabre acts, using language not very different from that of those who kill and wound innocent people as they go about their way home. Addressing the Albanian public through state television, he said there is crime in Albania, but that these crimes are between the gangs themselves and therefore are not a concern for the police. Tirana’s chief of police forgot that many of the people killed among the gangs—and people outside the gangs, as he puts it—were shot by one another, while the gunfire alarmed and traumatized no small number of citizens, whether or not they were directly involved in the incident. A night later, they will surely not dare go out into the streets until Tirana’s chief of police also designates the places where gangs should kill one another. The murders in the middle of the capital show that crime is not a problem only in the north or the south, but is also present on an even more dangerous scale in the capital, where the government has left its citizens drowning in anxiety or exhausted by the courage and bravery they must summon to cross the city’s main boulevard twice a day. Albanians now guard against one another and protect themselves, while the government protects criminals, even though it collects taxes from the former to pay police salaries and receives from the latter the threat to its hold on power. Although there have been several police operations against crime over the past ten days, it seems this will not lead to a final solution to the problem throughout the country. The police operations seem to be combined with political operations within the Ministry of Public Order, which are meant to purge people connected with crime from that institution, as well as from other ministries and Parliament, from which much of the strength of crime and criminals in Albania originates. Without such a separation, the police operations—whether fragmentary or carried out by individuals engaged in the fight against crime—will remain merely piecemeal, be sabotaged and sacrificed in order to preserve the strength of mafia ties and the proceeds of this plunder: the millions collected at the expense of all Albanians. Today crime is not merely a bad development, or an accidental danger to anyone’s life, which is naturally among the most precious things. It has become a threat to the future even of those who have not felt such danger nearby; it threatens the Albanian economy, social issues, work, truth, property, investors, important infrastructure projects and other works, dragging the country down to a pastoral level where people think about how to protect their heads and limbs—and their children.

The serious crime took place near the Tirana Police Directorate. The murders are no cause for concern for chief of police Havari ON PAGE 4 The gunmen opened fire with Kalashnikovs, leaving two dead at the scene, one of them a roasted-corn seller. Five bystanders were seriously wounded, all five of them women. On Sunday, another young man was also killed on the outskirts of Tirana

The Sarajevo Summit concluded that economic aid should not be granted to Albania until all the conditions are met “A flow of new funds

The Supreme State Audit, in its six-month analysis: 638 officials abused their public positions Customs and tax authorities continue to incur losses and manipulate the figures in their plans. Aid [text unclear] delayed procedures and false declarations, fake authorizations for humanitarian associations issued by the Central Emergency Commission, abuses in privatization and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—these are the violations identified during the first six months of the year ON PAGE 5

“A flow of new funds would create only problems for Albania, because they would be swallowed up by mafia activities and organized crime” would create only problems for Albania, because they would be swallowed up by mafia activities and organized crime” ON PAGE 2

ON PAGE 3

The DP launches its internal election campaign; Berisha calls on party structures to liberalize party life The chairman of the PDSH, Prof. Dr. Sali Berisha, launched the party’s election campaign yesterday, during a meeting held in Tirana in the morning with all the chairmen and secretaries of the DP branches. What the Democratic leader insistently urged his party’s local leaders to do was “open up the party” and affirm the right to different opinions. ON PAGE 2

A criminal backed by the police attacks Puka Mayor Halit Furriku with a pistol The DP denounces the local police’s irresponsible conduct and the government officials’ decision not to protect local state institutions ON PAGE 3

Vollebeek appoints the new Head of the OSCE Presence in Albania Ambassador Ahrens takes Daan Everts’s place Following the communist rebellion of ’97, the OSCE has closely monitored political developments in Albania and has set up offices in many cities across the country ON PAGE 3

The police and the courts are under pressure from those in power to release criminals ON PAGE 3

The police and the courts are under pressure from those in power to release criminals in power to release criminals The DP will pull Albania out of the swamps of crime and corruption ON PAGE 3

The University of Prishtina reopened yesterday. Thousands of Kosovo Albanians were there as the University’s students and professors returned to the premises from which they had been violently expelled ten years earlier. The reopening of the University of Prishtina is the biggest event in Kosovo since the departure of the Serbian forces, who lost the war. The political leader of the KLA, Hashim Thaçi, was also present at the University’s reopening ceremony. Yesterday, the students, professors and employees of Kosovo’s largest center of learning returned to their workplaces and places of study, demonstrating the people of Kosovo’s desire to restore normality in every sphere.

Today, 324 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 serious crime against the entire Albanian world. The government of the former communists, who are free and untroubled, while the criminals who took the December Leader’s life remain at liberty, 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 honored Azem Hajdari cannot tolerate this state of affairs any longer. The government must either arrest the criminals and bring them to justice, or publicly declare that it itself carried out Azem Hajdari’s murder.