Party Dumps Albanian Hard-Liner : Unrest: The interior minister is fired. 5,000 refugees in foreign embassies are reassured they can leave the country.

Albania fired its hard-line interior minister in a Communist Party shake-up Saturday and reiterated that nearly 5,000 refugees packed into foreign embassies in Tirana could leave the country.

With the Balkan state’s 45-year-old Stalinist leadership rocked by unprecedented public dissent, a crisis session of the party Central Committee ended in what looked like a victory for reformers.

Austrian television reported that thousands of anti-government demonstrators poured into the streets of the capital after leadership changes were announced in Europe’s last bastion of rigid communism.

Albania’s official news agency ATA said Interior Minister Simon Stefani, whose security forces had spent a week trying to stop asylum-seekers flocking to eight embassies, has been replaced. He will also relinquish his role as deputy prime minister.

Stefani was the main casualty of a reshuffle of top party and government officials after the two-day Central Committee meeting.

The changes were announced after the government told envoys whose missions were packed with thousands of men, women and children that the refugees would be allowed to leave the country.

Italy said up to 1,500 refugees were in its embassy. West Germany said it was looking after more than 2,000 Albanians and that more than 1,000 were in the French mission. About 200 more had taken refuge in the Greek, Czechoslovak, Polish, Hungarian and Turkish embassies.

ATA said Stefani, to be replaced at the Interior Ministry by Central Committee Secretary Hekuran Isai, will be shunted to the chairmanship of the State Control Commission. Three other party officials will be forced to retire from the ruling Politburo, it said.

President Ramiz Alia, who has been pushing for change in Europe’s poorest nation, remained at the helm.

Diplomatic sources said a power struggle, waged in secret since the death in 1985 of hard-line leader Enver Hoxha, had burst into the open at the emergency meeting. Alia favors a gradual opening of Albania to the outside world while Hoxha’s widow, Nexhmijhe Hoxha, advocates continued Stalinist policies.

Austrian television reported that thousands of people staged a silent march through the center of Tirana on Saturday night. “They protested against the policy of the regime and the militant police force,” it said.

Thousands of Albanians, packed in sweltering heat in the embassies, whooped with joy when they received word that the government had bowed to their demands to be allowed to leave the country.

In Geneva, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said he is mediating between Tirana and the governments of the occupied embassies and is confident Albania will give passports to all those who want them.

A correspondent of the British-based Sky satellite television channel said in a report from Tirana that only those people who were already inside foreign embassies will be allowed to leave.

Diplomats said government attempts to stop the refugees’ flight had apparently been abandoned. On Monday, Albanian police had opened fire when some 200 Albanians stormed embassies by scaling fences or ramming trucks through gates.