Albanians Ram Embassy Gates in Asylum Bid

Scores of Albanian dissidents scaled embassy walls and rammed the gates with trucks in Tirana in a desperate bid for asylum and escape from Eastern Europe’s last hard-line Communist regime, officials said Tuesday.

Diplomats said as many as 200 people have been given refuge in various embassies. But other would-be refugees who had gone to the embassies of Bulgaria, Cuba and Egypt have been handed over to Albanian authorities, the diplomats said.

A statement by Albania’s official ATA news agency said that 300 to 400 people, including “vagabonds, former prisoners . . . as well as some deceived adolescents” threw stones and bricks at police, blocked traffic and broke shop windows Monday night. It said security forces restored order and detained a number of people.

The agency called the disturbance “an alarming situation” aimed at impairing “the good relations existing with the friendly states represented in Tirana, and to distort the image of Albania in the world.”

In Budapest, Hungary’s MTI news agency said the government of Albanian Communist Party leader Ramiz Alia had offered passports and guarantees of safety to those sheltered in embassies.

“The Albanian authorities are willing to guarantee that the people who will leave the embassies will be unharmed and granted passports,” MTI said.

It said no one had yet taken up the offer.

Police attacks on those desperately trying to batter their way to sanctuary in the Tirana embassies since Sunday were condemned by foreign governments Tuesday.

Italy, which has just assumed the presidency of the European Community, said it will ask for a coordinated EC response to the events in Tirana at a meeting in Brussels today.

Dissidents scaling embassy walls were fired on by police--at least five were injured, according to diplomats.

“I saw four people injured among the refugees. At least two were hit by gunfire. One of them was in serious condition,” said Greek Ambassador Pantelis Karkambasis, who Tuesday was sheltering five Albanians.

Karkambasis said the Greek Embassy decided Tuesday to send families of its personnel out of the country. “It was quiet during the day. I do not know what will happen tonight,” he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: “If these reports prove true, we would strongly condemn the actions of police in firing on Albania citizens seeking refuge, and we would call upon the Albanian authorities to find a peaceful and just solution to the problem of refugees now in the embassies.”

Others injured themselves in a frenzy for freedom. Six Albanians rammed the Italian Embassy gates in a truck, and some were injured in scuffles with police.

“They came in on a truck. They just flattened the gates,” said a spokesman at the embassy, where 20 dissidents were hiding.

An estimated 180 others are in the embassies of West Germany, East Germany, France, Turkey, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and even in China’s.

Western diplomatic sources said some who sought refuge in the Bulgarian, Cuban and Egyptian missions had been turned over to Albanian authorities.

They said Bulgaria had turned over a few refugees, and Cuba and Egypt two each. No others were left in their compounds.

In Sofia, the Bulgarian state news agency BTA said Bulgarian and Albanian officials were negotiating over the fate of at least one youth who entered the Bulgarian Embassy on Sunday.

“Negotiations are under way with Albanian officials to settle the issue in the spirit of mutual understanding and good relations,” BTA quoted the Bulgarian Embassy as saying.

Albania is the last outpost of Marxist orthodoxy in Europe. Even before pro-democracy sentiment cut a swath through the Soviet satellites of the Warsaw Pact, it was an outsider.