Albania Announces Sweeping Rights Reforms : Eastern Europe: The Continent’s last hard-line Communist nation begins to soften up.

Albania, Europe’s last hard-line Communist state, has announced sweeping reforms of human rights, giving individuals more legal powers and changing the definition of crimes against the state.

The reforms mark an apparent softening of the Communist Party’s orthodox line, which had resisted the wave of change that swept one-party power from neighboring East European states.

The official Albanian news agency ATA said Wednesday that Parliament had unanimously approved draft laws reducing the number of crimes punishable by death, giving all citizens the right to hold a passport and legalizing foreign investment.

The reforms were announced Tuesday at the same session of Parliament at which Prime Minister Adil Carcani declared Albania’s readiness to join the East-West Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

Respect for human rights is a key condition for entry.

“It is our constant duty to enhance the care for human rights so that the relation between the state and citizen, society and the individual, respond to the current stage of material, cultural and social development of the country,” said the ATA report.

Albania is the only European state that is not a member of the 35-nation CSCE, which coordinates military security, economic cooperation and civil liberties.

The reforms, still to be endorsed by Parliament, include cutting the number of crimes punishable by death to 11 from 34, ATA said.

All women would be exempt from the death penalty, whereas at present only pregnant women cannot be executed.

Making cautious steps to recognize the authority of law, the reforms would give rights to legal defense, appeal and speedy trial.

All Albanians would be able to seek passports, and defection, while remaining an offense, “should not be considered as betrayal of the homeland but as an illegal border trespassing.”