Albania Chief Rejects Peace Role for Western Mediators

President Sali Berisha, parts of his country in open revolt, deepened his own diplomatic isolation Wednesday by refusing the helping hand of Western mediators.

Foreign Minister Tritan Shehu said the “timing” was wrong for an international peace mission, even as a military assault appeared imminent against Albanians in revolt in three southern cities.

Albanian warplanes dropped bombs on two villages near the rebellious port town of Sarande, Associated Press reported, quoting a photographer on the scene. The information could not be verified because the government has blocked most foreign reporters from the sealed-off area.

Repeating that it has lost control of Sarande and at least two other cities, the right-wing government Wednesday continued to deploy military tanks and troops, alongside secret police, to crush armed rebellion by thousands of Albanians.

A protest that began as outrage over collapsed pyramid investment schemes has escalated into chaotic lawlessness in some areas, and, in others, political demands for a new government.

There were reports of gunfire exchanges in an area between Sarande and Delvine to the northeast, as well as sporadic skirmishing around the port city of Vlore, located farther north along the Adriatic Sea and center of the unrest. In Delvine, army troops were reportedly forced to withdraw by heavily armed anti-government forces, who have looted military arsenals in recent days.

Within Vlore, however, the army still had not deployed by Wednesday evening, according to a businessman reached by telephone. A local official loyal to the government in the city of Kavaje, about 50 miles north of Vlore, said the military operation against the rebellious port would probably begin before dawn today.

In Tirana, meanwhile, journalists from the opposition daily Koha Jone denounced what they described as a campaign of harassment, beatings and threats by thugs loyal to Berisha. Offices of the paper were gutted by arson on the first night of Berisha’s emergency rule, and the editor, Ben Blushi, has been in hiding, saying he feared for his life. Reporter Zamir Dule was captured by police Sunday night, beaten while in custody and finally released; and a journalist seized in the southern city of Fier was beaten into unconsciousness before being freed Wednesday, paper editors said.

Shpetim Nazarko, editor of another opposition daily, said secret police staked out his home overnight, then tried to take him away. He escaped and was considering seeking political asylum. About a dozen reporters were holed up in a Tirana hotel where the international press is based.

Western capitals, worried that war in Albania would trigger a refugee exodus, urged Berisha to talk with his political opposition and offered to mediate in the crisis, which is returning the country to the international isolation of its Communist past.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was preparing to dispatch a fact-finding mission headed by Austria’s former chancellor, Franz Vranitzky, when rebuffed Wednesday, a spokeswoman said.

The OSCE would have pursued issues of human rights, use of force and the need for talks between the disputing parties. Although the West has generally turned a blind eye to Berisha’s abuses in the past, the OSCE last year condemned fraudulent elections that gave Berisha another mandate. The organization is probably not viewed favorably by the besieged president.

Dismayed at lack of attention from the West, the political opposition to Berisha, allied in the 11-party Forum for Democracy, called on the United States and Europe to exert new pressure on Tirana to end emergency rule and avoid civil war.

Berisha met Tuesday with members of the opposition Socialist Party but dismissed their calls for talks. Human rights activists say the government and its secret police are using the state of emergency and chaos to silence legitimate opposition.

“If [Berisha] starts a big clash [in the south] he will then use force to eliminate those who oppose him here in Tirana,” said Forum spokesman Fatos Lubonja, a former political prisoner during Albania’s Communist dictatorship of earlier decades. “Nobody knows how this adventure will end.”