Today, dear reader, you hold in your hands a “Zëri i Popullit” with a new look, a different page, four times as many pages, and new, contemporary technology. This was a demand of the times, an imperative. It was not easy to get this far. Alongside the financial difficulties—because “Zëri” has never been swimming in money—there are also the difficulties faced by the entire opposition and independent press: the violence of the political power, which does not like our positions as a constructive opposition. Today “Zëri i Popullit” arrives completely new in form, but it is also new in content. You will find many new sections in the pages of our newspaper, which we conceive as an ongoing conversation between the Editorial Office and you, dear readers, whether you are members or supporters of the Socialist Party or simply citizens interested in learning, through our newspaper, about the socialist alternative that “Zëri” advocates. Thus, with this qualitative change in the technology used to produce the newspaper, nothing has changed in the relationship between “Zëri i Popullit” and its readers, who have always stood by it in good times and bad. “Zëri i Popullit” strives to stay close to you, close to your efforts for a better life, while [unintelligible] the new one, with the nerve of civic concern. For there are new newspapers that have quickly grown old, through the barrenness of their ideas, their uncultured language, and the loneliness into which their readers have left them. By reflecting the efforts to deepen democracy and the Socialist Party’s struggle to establish the rule of law and a market economy, “Zëri i Popullit” will strive always to be close to you with new ideas and fresh thinking, without bending to the day-to-day pressures of those in power, who come and go. This change demanded by the times, this technological renewal of “Zëri i Popullit,” is being made only (continued on page 5)

The Socialist Party’s relations and commitments regarding the deepening of Albania’s Euro-Atlantic integration, and the dynamic continuation of comprehensive relations with the USA, are programmatic and cannot be compromised... Read on page 3: interview with Socialist Party Vice-Chairman Mr. Namik Dokle

The President of the Republic and Chairman of the High Council of Justice, Sali Berisha, threatens journalists with a lawsuit. Sali Berisha, who holds both the stone and the nut, as well as the salaries and appointments of every investigator, prosecutor, and judge, need not tire himself with lawsuits, since he has them all won. But “Zëri,” in response to the President’s insistence, answers Him with the Director’s words: When a policeman strikes a citizen, we are on the citizen’s side. Read on page 2: “Statement by the Spokesperson of the Socialist Party of Albania.”

No comment: RD contradicts President Berisha “...as for alliances, Dokle should know very well that the PD, ever since its founding and always, has considered and will consider an alliance with the PS a true betrayal of the National ideals.” (from RD, Sunday, 13 August 1995, page 1)

—Liko Bisha from Patos reports: —On 14 February 1995, three people abducted my daughter as she was returning from school in Old Patos. The girl is called DASHAMIRE BISHA and is only 13 years old! BUT WHO ARE THE KIDNAPPERS?... The girl’s father reports: Read on page 5

Read on page 4 “Statement by the Press Spokesperson of the Socialist Party”

In the spotlight Once again, the REUTERS news agency reports that the Russian ILIUSHIN aircraft, intercepted with weapons in Afghanistan, ended up being forced to land in Kandahar. Days earlier, it had been reported that these weapons, dispatched to a country where a civil war is taking place, had come from Albania. This news comes after reports that Albanian weapons were also used in massacres on a massive scale in Rwanda during the interethnic clashes between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense remains silent. Photograph: [illegible]

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