Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 6, 1990 TAG: 9007060753
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIENNA, AUSTRIA LENGTH: Medium
At least 1,300 Albanians were jamming foreign missions even though the government of Communist leader Ramiz Alia pledged to issue them travel papers, foreign officials said.
The policy-setting Central Committee of Albania's Communist Party met today in emergency session for a second day in a bid to resolve the crisis facing Europe's poorest and most-isolated country.
Attempts by foreign governments to send supplies and personnel to ease conditions in the embassies have been rebuffed by authorities in Albania, and diplomats today spoke of near intolerable conditions in some cases as a result.
The rush to the embassies this week, at times violent, follows last year's exodus of East Germans to embassies in other East European countries shortly before the fall of their hard-line government.
The Albanian Foreign Ministry on Thursday promised to grant passports to those who have sought refuge in foreign embassies in a desperate attempt to flee their homeland.
"The Albanian authorities . . . are ready to grant passports, even to those citizens who are still in the foreign embassies and who shall ask for such a thing," said a Foreign Ministry statement carried by the official Albanian news agency ATA.
But hundreds more would-be refugees gathered outside embassies in the capital and gained entry into embassy compounds, said Turkish Ambassador Teoman Surenkok.
A spokesman for the West German Foreign Ministry, Hanns Schumacher, told reporters in Bonn that more than 1,000 Albanians were crowded into his country's embassy by midday today.
The French Embassy was harboring 120, with 60 more in the Italian Embassy and about 50 each in the Polish and Czechoslovak embassies, he said. Altogether, about a dozen foreign embassies were harboring refugees.
West German and Hungarian diplomats said police were not preventing people from approaching their embassies and were allowing relatives to talk to the refugees through embassy compound fences.
"The police have been withdrawn starting last night," a Hungarian diplomat said. "Now, there are only one or two at each embassy, more symbolic than anything else."
The United States has no embassy in Albania since the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
Under 45 years of hard-line Communist rule, travel for average Albanians has been virtually impossible as the country's late leader, Enver Hoxha, steered his 3.2 million people into increasing isolation.
But under Communist leader Alia, who took over after Hoxha's death in 1985, the country has increasingly sought ties abroad and has begun implementing some cautious reforms.
One of the would-be refugees, in a telephone interview with Hungarian state radio, said he "just can't make a living" in Albania, and wanted to seek a better life elsewhere.
The 28-year-old man, holed up with 11 other Albanians in the Hungarian embassy, said he worked three jobs - as a bricklayer, a driver and a lathe operator - and still could not make enough to support his family.
The Austria Press Agency reported earlier that authorities had revoked new regulations allowing passport-holding Albanians to apply directly at foreign embassies for visas to travel abroad.
But the Foreign Ministry statement said that to ease the issuing of visas, "all foreign diplomatic representations in Tirana as well as our citizens have been told that the latter will receive the visas directly at the respective diplomatic representations."
It said there were "a great number of passports of Albanian citizens" waiting for visas in some embassies. The statement said 1,400 passports have been issued over the past 10 days.
"At a time when . . . Albanian citizens are being granted passports to travel abroad, it is completely unjustifiable for our citizens to stay in the foreign embassies and continue to be kept there," the statement said.
It said an unspecified number of people had already left embassies. It said some had applied for passports, been granted them and left the country.
The Foreign Ministry criticized speculation "that allegedly the Albanian competent authorities do not provide passports to those wishing to travel abroad. Such a thing does not respond to reality."
A package of new regulations, entitling all Albanians over the age of 16 to own a passport for foreign travel, took effect Tuesday.
Most of the Albanians who fled to foreign embassies before Thursday entered in a rush during rioting that began Monday under fire from Albanian security forces. Diplomats said at least three people were wounded.
West Germany's foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, sent a letter to his Albanian counterpart Thursday insisting West Germany be allowed to bring in more personnel and supplies to care for the refugees. West Germany has been waiting two days for permission to fly a planeload of supplies into Tirana.
by CNB