Army Closes In on Rebellious Albanian City

Tanks and troops streamed into southern Albania on Tuesday and took positions near the rebellious city of Vlore, where armed anti-government forces defied emergency rule and roamed streets they claimed as their own.

Warning of civil war, opponents of President Sali Berisha demanded that he retreat from severe restrictions, including a curfew and a crackdown on the press, imposed after the collapse of fraudulent pyramid schemes unleashed the worst violence in Albania since the end of its particularly paranoid form of communism six years ago.

The United States and Europe, alarmed by the flare-up of yet another unstable Balkan hot spot, urged the disputing parties to talk and sent special envoys to Tirana, the capital, to confront the crisis.

Memories of desperate Albanian refugees clinging to the sides of ships crossing the Adriatic in 1991 are fresh in the minds of people in this region and are especially evocative for impoverished Albania’s Southern European neighbors.

But Berisha rejected opposition pleas for a new government and pressed ahead, deploying his army and claiming to have restored order to one southern city, Gjirokaster. Authorities conceded, however, that much of southern Albania--where foreigners are now banned--was out of control.

Here in Fier, where protesters seized and looted an army arsenal over the weekend, order, Berisha-style, was taking hold Tuesday.

Tanks, armored personnel carriers and army trucks dating from Soviet days roared through the small city about 45 miles south of Tirana. From the back of one military vehicle, assault rifles were being handed out to rough men in civilian dress, probably secret police or pro-government henchmen.

A group of men in coats and ties drove through the city firing guns from a black station wagon. Men with rifles slung over their shoulders swaggered outside a cafe. A tank parked outside an empty hotel. A hearse cruised the dusty streets.

“Civil war is dangerous because you don’t know who the other one [side] is,” said Dr. Jani Pjetri, head of the emergency unit at Fier’s state-run hospital. As he sought to minimize the level of violence, gunfire rippled in the near distance.

Reports on southern Albania were sketchy because of restrictions placed on journalists, either because the right-wing government wants to control the flow of information or because it is planning a potentially bloody assault, analysts said.

Western journalists attempting to reach Vlore got as far as a wooded hill on the southern edge of Fier, about 20 miles north of Vlore, where they were turned back by menacing men in military uniforms with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

In one case, the men threatened an Albanian translator and driver accompanying three reporters for U.S. newspapers, branding the Albanians “spies” because they were working with foreigners.

In Vlore, heart of the rage and protests that have claimed up to 20 lives, a resident reached Tuesday night through a rare telephone connection after lines were cut said the army had not yet entered the city. But an attack was expected. “If the army gets in, it will be war,” the businessman said. “We are waiting for them. We are better organized. We have our own army now.”

The government portrayed a state of sheer anarchy in Vlore and other southern cities. State radio and television reported that “terrorists” in Vlore killed four people who tried to obey a government ultimatum to turn in their weapons.

But the businessman gave a somewhat different picture: The lawlessness of the previous three days--when arsenals were looted, public buildings burned and policemen killed--was being brought under control, he said, by an ad hoc “defense” committee that demands Berisha’s ouster and may decide to issue a declaration of semi-independence.

Weapons, however, remained abundant. And those who wished to escape Vlore were not being allowed to do so by either side, the businessman said. He said the rebels were patrolling day and night and had seized navy boats to keep watch over the shoreline.

The government was clearly in command of the lone highway that runs from Tirana to Fier. At more than half a dozen checkpoints manned by government agents, cars were being stopped at gunpoint and their occupants searched.

Most of the agents spoke with northern accents, lending credence to the belief that Berisha was transporting loyal supporters from his northern home region to the more dissident south, traditionally a Communist stronghold.

Berisha enjoyed backing from the West, which once regarded him as a reformer, until fraudulent elections last year cooled that support. The increasingly autocratic former heart surgeon blames the violence on the opposition Socialist Party, heir to the Communist Party that ruled Albania for 45 isolated, backward years.

In a statement read on state television Tuesday night, Berisha accused the Socialist Party of organizing “armed rebellion” in the south, saying to his opposition: “You decided to overturn the constitutional order and Albanian democracy through an armed rebellion and created a grave problem for the country.”

He also apparently blames some of his associates. On Tuesday, it was confirmed that he had sacked the army chief of staff and the head of the national guard. Diplomats said it appeared that the two men were being held responsible for allowing rioting to escalate into full insurrection. In the Balkan tradition, Berisha is relying increasingly on the secret police--not the more professional army--for his political survival.

Two Albanian air force pilots, meanwhile, diverted their MIG-15 fighter to southern Italy and asked for asylum after being ordered to open fire on civilians, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.