Albania Revolts

Revolt spread throughout most of southern Albania on Monday, but rebel leaders from one key city agreed after talks with Italian diplomats to lay down their arms. Representatives from the port city of Vlore said they wanted swift implementation of a peace deal between President Sali Berisha and his political opponents. The declaration by eight representatives of the Vlore rebel committee was signed on an Italian warship at a meeting with Italy's ambassador to Albania, Paolo Foresti.

Beleaguered Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano resigned Monday, two weeks after rioting that pushed his impoverished nation to the brink of anarchy. Nano's resignation was announced after a meeting of the Socialist Party leadership in this capital. A statement said that Pandeli Majko, the 31-year-old general-secretary of the Socialist Party, will be the party's candidate for prime minister.

A delegation of senior European diplomats has warned Albania's bitter political rivals to take their battle out of the streets and start making democracy work. The diplomats criticized both Prime Minister Fatos Nano and opposition leader Sali Berisha for Albania's political crisis but made it clear they don't want to see Berisha arrested for last week's riots.

A delegation of senior European diplomats has warned Albania's bitter political rivals to take their battle out of the streets and start making democracy work. The diplomats criticized both Prime Minister Fatos Nano and opposition leader Sali Berisha for Albania's political crisis but made it clear they don't want to see Berisha arrested for last week's riots.

It takes more than an assembly line these days to run the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Albania. It takes Kalashnikov assault rifles. As looting spread to villages surrounding the Albanian capital, the plant--three miles from downtown Tirana--came under repeated attack Friday. The trim white factory, surrounded by a white wall and red metal fencing, was a natural target for roving mobs taking advantage of the complete absence of police in the midst of the country's rebellion.

Rebels angrily wave assault rifles and badger occupants of cars that navigate helter-skelter through the main boulevard of this southern city, past barricades of broken concrete and metal bars. Few women dare venture outside. Gunfire and explosions cut the air and reverberate over the Adriatic Sea.

Heavily armed men barred Premier Bashkim Fino from visiting a town north of the capital in a new spasm of lawlessness as Albania waited impatiently for the arrival of an Italian-led security force. About 15 gunmen blocked Fino and other Cabinet ministers at Bushat, 60 miles north of Tirana, the capital, as they traveled toward the town of Shkoder. The gunmen detonated two grenades on the roadside and forced the convoy to turn back.

Parliament handed President Sali Berisha special powers to restore order Sunday after demonstrators clashed with riot police in the capital and set scores of buildings ablaze in towns across the Balkan nation. Parliament, sitting for the first time on a Sunday since the ruling right-wing Democratic Party swept to power in a 1992 general election, voted at a crisis session to give Berisha the power to deploy troops to unblock roads and guard government buildings.

Opponents of Albania's regime led by strongman Ramiz Alia blew up a bridge near the southern city of Ballsh in the first reported anti-government violence in 24 years, emigre sources in Athens said. The emigres said the bridge's destruction represents a protest over shortages of basic food, including bread and corn, and Alia's hard-line rule. Western diplomats who recently visited the capital, Tirana, said southern Albania is suffering severe food shortages.

Angry Albanians who lost money in high-risk, get-rich-quick schemes seized control of this central town Saturday, beating a government minister and riot police before turning on reporters. Tritan Shehu, Albania's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, was hit in the back of the head with a stone and in the back with an iron bar. As night fell, the streets in this town 60 miles south of the capital, Tirana, belonged to the protesters.

Parliament on Friday stripped former President Sali Berisha of his immunity from prosecution for an alleged coup attempt, pushing him to the wall in a dispute with the Albanian government. Just hours after Berisha failed to mobilize his promised mass protests, parliament--which his Democratic Party is boycotting--cleared the way for the government to order his arrest. Foreign diplomats were trying to talk the government out of acting.

The government in this capital said Monday that it had crushed an attempted coup and was back in control of the city after a day of fighting in which at least three people died. "Police have taken the . . . situation under control. The attempt at a coup d'etat today failed," Interior Minister Perikli Teta said on national television. Gunfire and explosions shook the city for much of Monday after the funeral of a slain opposition politician erupted into violence.

Protesters angry over the killing of an opposition leader set fire to Albania's main government building and sent the prime minister and his Cabinet fleeing in a hail of gunfire. One protester was killed and four guards of Prime Minister Fatos Nano were wounded as marchers and police traded gunfire. Clouds of smoke from burning cars rose over the center of Tirana, the capital.

More than 1,200 French, Italian and Spanish soldiers landed in Albania by air and sea Tuesday, the first real muscle in a European push to provide humanitarian aid and ease three months of unrest. Insurgents in the southern port of Vlore, fearing President Sali Berisha might be emboldened by the troops' presence, grabbed their guns and took up defensive positions around the city. Vlore, one of the ports to be secured by the foreign troops, is the heart of the rebellion by Berisha's opponents.

Armed foreign troops landed in Albania on Friday for the first time since World War II, carrying the prospect of stability to a country plagued by months of violence, food shortages and political upheaval. An advance team of 120 Italian paratroopers arrived by air and sea as part of a 6,000-member international force with a mission to secure aid deliveries.

Heavily armed men barred Premier Bashkim Fino from visiting a town north of the capital in a new spasm of lawlessness as Albania waited impatiently for the arrival of an Italian-led security force. About 15 gunmen blocked Fino and other Cabinet ministers at Bushat, 60 miles north of Tirana, the capital, as they traveled toward the town of Shkoder. The gunmen detonated two grenades on the roadside and forced the convoy to turn back.

The power struggle is played out on the nightly news. For a few minutes, the new Socialist prime minister, Bashkim Fino, is shown going about his official duties of running what is left of this country. But then his political enemy, President Sali Berisha, appears. Pictures of Berisha are accompanied by announcements of his latest meetings with German and French ambassadors or with an emergency European Union delegation. Berisha may be down, but he's not out.

Newspapers on Saturday quoted an Albanian border guard who fled the country as saying that security forces fired on protesters last week and that one city was in a state of "revolution." Yugoslavia's Tanjug news agency, meanwhile, said there was "nothing unusual" going on in Albania, one day after reporting that authorities there had imposed a virtual state of emergency to prevent unrest.

Rifts opened in President Sali Berisha's right-wing party Friday, aggravating the crisis in lawless Albania as it prepares for deployment of an Italian-led security force of up to 6,000 troops. About 20 Democratic Party parliament members said they will no longer "accept the diktat of the president" and accused Berisha of seizing too much power. Their statement was the strongest criticism yet of Berisha from his own ranks since unrest broke out in the nation last month.

The Security Council late Friday authorized an Italian-led force to guard deliveries of food and other necessities in Albania for three months and to help the country recover from violence and near-anarchy. The vote was 14-0 with China abstaining on a resolution that invoked Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which permits the use of force to protect freedom of movement for the troops in what the council called a "multinational protection force."