Albanias

Safet Zhulali, 59, Albania's deposed defense minister, died Saturday in Tirana, Albania, of a heart attack. Zhulali was defense minister from 1992 to 1997 under former President Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party. But he had to give up his post in 1997 when Berisha's government was overthrown because its fraudulent investment schemes collapsed. Tens of thousands of investors lost their life savings.

Freak winter storms paralyzed swathes of southeastern Europe on Saturday, claiming five lives and prompting Greece and Bulgaria to declare states of emergency in some areas. The storms blanketed much of the region with snow, blocking roads and disrupting flights for a second day. In southwestern Turkey, two men froze to death, Turkish television reported. Two others died in icy temperatures in Istanbul.

An Albanian presidential guard seeking political asylum shot himself dead outside the U.S. Embassy in Tirana on Tuesday after local police refused to let him enter. The 32-year-old man, armed with a pistol, told an Albanian policeman that he wanted to meet U.S. Ambassador Joseph Limprecht to request political asylum. Police outside the building refused to admit him because he did not have an appointment. The man fired a shot at a police officer and then shot himself in the head.

We had better get used to the word "Albanians" because we will be hearing a lot more about them in the coming years in the Balkans. History's ghosts are once again revisiting us in what used to be known as the "Albanian question." After Kosovo, the Albanians again are the active ingredient in the most recent flare-up in Macedonia. This has been a rather predictable crisis in the Yugoslav context for some years now, for the very simple reason that the Albanians are a geographically split people.

Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta made an unprecedented visit to Kosovo on Wednesday, urging dialogue to avoid more violence in a tense area of southern Serbia bordering the province. Meta met local and international authorities during the first official visit by an Albanian government leader to the majority ethnic Albanian province, a de facto international protectorate still legally part of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. Kosovo's U.N.

For 11 weeks, Zeke Rrushi could feel the tremors of NATO bombs and Serbian shells exploding on the border with Kosovo less than a mile away. He listened to intermittent sniper fire and to the staccato of automatic rifles so close to his farmhouse. But to Rrushi's mind, the only real danger to his family came from the barrel of his neighbor's shotgun.

Instead of going on a cruise for her 60th birthday, Simi Valley nurse Nancy Bulcha will be in Albania helping children of Kosovar refugees enter the world. Bulcha said she knew she had to go to Albania after NATO bombing began and Kosovars began fleeing by the hundreds of thousands into neighboring nations. "When I heard about the women giving birth in railroad stations and out in the field, I said to myself, 'How come you're not there helping them?' " she said.

Paving the way for NATO peacekeepers and Kosovar refugees returning home, 200 to 300 men and women from a construction battalion at Port Hueneme Navy base will head to Albania in the coming weeks to help rebuild the country's decimated roads. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 sent 150 Seabees to Albania in the last two weeks, and another 200 to 300 will leave from Spain over the next couple of weeks.

In the name of human rights, all reason is easily lost. The intensive bombing of Yugoslavia and the foreign occupation of one of that nation's provinces is now widely acclaimed as an act of uncomplicated decency. As British-led Nepalese Gurkhas join German commandos to put Albanian Yugoslavs under the rule of a Brazilian agent of the U.N., one wonders if those creating the new world order are not drunk on their own power.

A prophet looking at this border town might say it this way: If Kukes will not come to the world, the world will come to Kukes. During the Cold War, isolated by steep mountains and a paranoid Communist dictatorship, Kukes did not see Westerners for 40 years. Even the few Marxist-Leninists allowed into Albania during those times resisted making the eight-hour trek north from the capital, Tirana.