Albanias

Leaders of the ethnic Albanian community in the Serbian province of Kosovo sought to calm tensions after five Serbs were shot and killed in apparent revenge for the killing of an Albanian. Serbian authorities refrained from threatening retaliation and did not criticize Albanian leaders directly, possibly to avoid further escalation of violence. Separate shootings Monday evening in four towns across the province took place within the space of an hour, leaving five Serbs dead and four wounded.

Ramiz Alia Albania's last communist leader Ramiz Alia, 85, who was Albania's last communist president and is credited with opening to democracy one of the world's most isolationist political systems, died Friday of lung complications, an Albanian official announced. He assumed leadership of the Albanian Communist Party in 1985 after the death of his longtime friend, dictator Enver Hoxha. After a series of massive student protests, Alia introduced political and economic reforms that paved the way for the country's first free elections in 1991.

The Communist leaders of Albania--a small Balkan country that borders on Yugoslavia, Greece and the Adriatic Sea--have long done their best to insulate the Albanian people from troublesome outside influences. To an appalling degree they have succeeded. Recent visitors report, however, that the winds of change are being felt ever so slightly even in Albania. Albania, a fiercely independent country that was occupied by the Axis powers in World War II, fell under Communist rule after the war.

Somewhere on Earth there must be a cheaper, easier, more exotic cruise, packed with even more beautiful sights and filled with more history, providing even tastier food, but for now, I'm happy to settle on this one: Ionian Cruises' daily excursion from Corfu, Greece, to Sarande, Albania. How cheap is it? Thirty-eight euros (about $55) for the round-trip boat ride, 19 euros (about $27) for a shore excursion that includes a fabulous buffet lunch. That's about $82 for an enchanting day in Albania, an additional dollar if you want a big glass of wine with your lunch.

Your article ("Albania Now Open for Tourist Business," News and Briefs, June 24) was the word I had been eagerly awaiting. On the basis of it, I was able to travel to that little-known and isolated corner of the Balkans with Exotic Tours of Montreal, as noted in the article. What a delight to be among the first Americans not of Albanian background to explore this intriguing country. A visit to Albania is a trip backwards in time to a land of primitive and unsophisticated agricultural methods and a correspondingly simple way of life.

If you go THE BEST WAY TO SARANDE AND BUTRINT The only daily cruises to Albania sail from the northern Greek island of Corfu. Communications are quirky in Corfu; my ATT cellphone, with a built-in GSM chip for Europe, worked perfectly in Athens and Santorini but not at all in Corfu. The safest way to buy tickets is to visit the head office of Ionian Cruises, a 15-minute walk from the heart of Corfu, and buy them with cash. Credit-card fraud is rampant throughout Greece. Seats are available even during the peak summer season a day in advance and often on the morning of the cruise.

Somewhere on Earth there must be a cheaper, easier, more exotic cruise, packed with even more beautiful sights and filled with more history, providing even tastier food, but for now, I'm happy to settle on this one: Ionian Cruises' daily excursion from Corfu, Greece, to Sarande, Albania. How cheap is it? Thirty-eight euros (about $55) for the round-trip boat ride, 19 euros (about $27) for a shore excursion that includes a fabulous buffet lunch. That's about $82 for an enchanting day in Albania, an additional dollar if you want a big glass of wine with your lunch.

Serbian and Yugoslav forces launched a fierce offensive Tuesday on the last remaining stronghold of ethnic Albanian separatists in the Serbian province of Kosovo. By late Tuesday, the combined forces had seized at least four guerrilla-held villages and killed many rebels, said the Serb Media Center, which releases official information. Several hundred guerrillas withdrew deeper into the Drenica region, it said.

The Albanian army used helicopters, boats and temporary bridges Friday to rescue villagers in northern Albania where overflowing rivers and torrential rains caused heavy flooding.

Albania rushed soldiers to a town in the isolated Balkan republic today to quell an attack on Communist Party officials and buildings by "hooligans" armed with stones and iron bars, a broadcast said. The attack in the northern city of Shkodra came the day after a peaceful rally by tens of thousands of people in the capital, Tirana, founded the country's first non-Communist political party. It was not clear whether the army used weapons or whether the situation had quieted.

If you go THE BEST WAY TO SARANDE AND BUTRINT The only daily cruises to Albania sail from the northern Greek island of Corfu. Communications are quirky in Corfu; my ATT cellphone, with a built-in GSM chip for Europe, worked perfectly in Athens and Santorini but not at all in Corfu. The safest way to buy tickets is to visit the head office of Ionian Cruises, a 15-minute walk from the heart of Corfu, and buy them with cash. Credit-card fraud is rampant throughout Greece. Seats are available even during the peak summer season a day in advance and often on the morning of the cruise.

The senior U.S. diplomat in Albania and his staff have been cleared of allegations that they were involved in covering up the illegal source of ammunition shipped to Afghanistan by an American military contractor, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday. Justice Department officials have informed the State Department's inspector general that U.S. Ambassador John Withers and five other members of the embassy team are not targets or subjects of an investigation, spokesman Robert Wood said.

Ismail Kadare is, in many ways, among the most problematic of major writers in contemporary Western letters. But that shouldn't prevent readers from savoring "The Siege" for what it is, a significant work by an important, fascinating author. Though he works completely within the context of the West's mainstream 20th century literature, Kadare's perspective is that of a writer preoccupied with the themes and history of his native land, Albania.

Once Europe's most forbidding coast, this sparkling stretch of the Ionian Sea is slowly revealing lost treasures that date back 2,500 years and shipwrecks from ancient times. Over the last two summers, a research ship carrying U.S. and Albanian experts has combed the waters off southern Albania inch by inch, using scanning equipment and submersible robots to seek ancient wrecks. In what organizers say is the first archaeological survey of Albania's seabed, at least five sites were located, which could fill in blanks on ancient shipbuilding techniques.

Drene Markgjoni spent 12 years in a hard-labor camp, punished for her fiance's attempt to flee Albania's regime, then one of the world's most repressive and isolationist. She swore she would never suffer like that for somebody else again. She pledged to forgo sex and marriage for the rest of her life, and declared herself a man. That was six decades ago. Now 85, with close-cropped white hair, dressed in a man's blue striped shirt and black trousers, she greets visitors with a manly handshake.

The "Accursed Mountains" tower high above the Shala Valley, snow clinging to their summits even in the summer. Their jagged peaks hide one of Europe's most remote areas, where tribal culture lives on even as the modern world encroaches. For about half the year, Shala, a protected national park, is cut off by heavy snowfall that blocks access to the two rock-strewn dirt tracks snaking through the mountains. The only way in or out is a seven-hour trek by foot to the nearest road, if the snow is not too deep.

The last statue of Albania's late Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha was removed Monday night from a glass-and-stone pyramid built in his memory in Tirana.

A moderate earthquake rocked northwestern Greece and southern Albania late Saturday, causing panic and some damage but no injuries, authorities said Sunday. A spokeswoman for the Athens Seismological Institute said the quake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale and was centered on the western Albanian coast, 236 miles northwest of Athens.

A leading human rights group on Monday urged the governments of Albania and the self-declared state of Kosovo to investigate horrific allegations about the kidnapping and abuse of Serb civilians after the NATO-led war that drove Serbian forces from Kosovo. The allegations involve about 400 Serbs who went missing after the war, which ended in June 1999. At that time, Kosovo Albanians were gaining power, backed by the United Nations and the U.S.

saranda, albania -- Encrusted with tiny shells and smelling strongly of the sea, a 2,400-year-old Greek jar lies in a saltwater bath in Durres Museum, on Albania's Adriatic coast. Part of a sunken shipment of as many as 60 ceramic vessels, the 26-inch storage jar, or amphora, was the top find from what organizers say is the first archaeological survey of this small Balkan nation's seabed, conducted by U.S. and Albanian experts. "Touch it, touch it.