WORLD : Summit Status Eludes Albania
Officials of neighboring Balkan states today gave only qualified support to Albania’s taking part in European affairs, and Greece insisted that the isolated, hard-line Communist nation make human-rights reforms.
Albania’s chances of gaining international acceptance were further damaged today as its most famous author, Ismail Karare, defected. Karare announced that he would seek political asylum in France because, he said, there was “no possibility of legal opposition” in his homeland.
Word of Karare’s defection reached Tirana just after the foreign ministers’ meeting closed, and there was no immediate official Albanian reaction.
Albania, hosting its first high-level international conference in decades, hopes to be invited to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Paris, in time for its summit session next month.
But the Balkan foreign ministers, at their meeting here today, did not give a clear endorsement to Albania’s participation in the summit.
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