Albania Factions Agree to Delay Free Elections Until March 31

Albanian head of state Ramiz Alia and the fledgling opposition agreed Wednesday to postpone the Communist nation’s first free elections, the state news agency ATA reported.

Newly legalized opposition parties want more time to campaign for the elections, originally scheduled for Feb. 10, because communications in Albania are poor and the Communists control almost all the mass media.

ATA said Alia, opposition leaders and officials of Communist-sponsored mass organizations agreed to postpone the elections until March 31 and to urge a strike ban until May 1.

“It’s really positive, at least a partial fulfillment of our demands,” Genc Pollo, spokesman for the main opposition faction, the Democratic Party, said by telephone from the capital, Tirana.

ATA said that, given the “grave economic and political situation,” the three opposition parties at the four-hour meeting had agreed to “appeal to interrupt strikes and demands for wage increases until May 1.”

The ATA report, monitored in Vienna, said the strike ban was needed for tranquility and “to realize genuinely free pluralist and democratic elections.”

The decisions on strikes and the elections were a compromise between the opposition and Alia’s Communists, who are loosening their grip after 46 years of Stalinist rule over the Balkan nation of 3.2 million.

Alia previously had rejected opposition demands for a three-month postponement. The Democratic Party, in turn, had said before the meeting that it supported strike demands for more pay and better working conditions.