Ruling Party Threatens to Reject Albania Vote

Key aides to Albanian President Sali Berisha were reported Tuesday to have abandoned the country even as his party threatened to reject Sunday’s election results and boycott a new parliament.

Diplomats cautioned that the situation in Albania remained precarious two days after parliamentary elections designed to rescue the Balkan country from anarchy.

Votes were still being counted, and independent monitors confirmed that in a handful of cities armed men were menacing election committees attempting to finish the tally. Some tally sheets were being altered to favor Berisha’s Democratic Party, a Western official quoted monitors as saying.

The Democrats, who have ruled Albania for the past five years, suffered a stunning loss to their rivals, the Socialist Party, according to preliminary results. Berisha conceded defeat Monday, but on Tuesday his proxies appeared to back away from the party’s commitment to respect the results.

Foreign Minister Tritan Shehu, a leader of Berisha’s party, and party Secretary-General Gens Pollo threatened to reject the results and not participate in the new parliament if various irregularities are not corrected. They made the threats in a meeting Tuesday with the head of the international mission observing the election, former Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky, according to officials who were present.

Shehu told Vranitzky that the party was reconsidering its initial acquiescence because of armed gangs at regional election offices who, he said, were working on behalf of the Socialists. That, however, contradicted the reports of independent monitors.

It was not clear how serious the threat was, but diplomats said the posturing would inflame rather than calm frayed nerves in a country where hundreds of people have been killed since the collapse of fraudulent pyramid schemes escalated into widespread armed revolt earlier this year.

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Meanwhile, several of Berisha’s closest aides were reported to have abandoned the country, possibly in fear of retaliation if the Socialists, heirs to Albania’s Communist Party, take power.

Most of those said to have left had ranking positions in Berisha’s sometimes brutish security services. They included Interior Minister Belul Cela and his deputy, Agim Shehu, according to diplomatic and other sources. Koha Jone, an opposition newspaper, also reported the departure of the commander of the presidential guard, Xhait Xhaferi, who was also a senior official in the dreaded secret police.

The departures of Cela and Agim Shehu would be especially significant. The Interior Ministry controls all police and most domestic intelligence agencies. Agim Shehu was implicated in the beatings of opposition politicians who protested fraudulent elections last year that gave Berisha total control over most institutions of the government.

In one more twist to Albania’s tortuous predicament Tuesday, the aspirant to the Albanian throne, King Leka, claimed widespread fraud in a separate referendum on restoring the monarchy. Joined by armed supporters, Leka, who has lived in exile for more than 50 years, accused the Socialists of altering ballots to defeat the monarchy.