Envoy Cancels Talks With Albanian Rebels Warns President June Elections Threatened

Under pressure from President Sali Berisha, a senior international envoy on Wednesday canceled plans to meet with insurgents and warned that political animosity threatens planned elections.

For his part, Berisha questioned whether elections expected in June should be held at all if rebels still control part of the south.

“They are trying to block the electoral process,” he told the envoy, former Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.

Vranitzky and his delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, responsible for coordinating humanitarian aid and democratization, met Wednesday with Berisha as well as members of the coalition government and political parties.

The delegation had planned to meet rebel leaders today in the southern port of Vlora and travel to the pro-Berisha northern city of Shkodra.

Vranitzky canceled both plans late Wednesday, apparently bowing to pressure from Berisha who told him the rebels were “extreme left Mafia traffickers” and relatives of major opposition party leaders.

OSCE spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said Vranitzky “decided that right now it’s more critical to work on the political process” in Tirana.

Vranitzky told Berisha that differences between the political parties imperil the June elections, and told reporters that the parties “are so far away from each other that they don’t talk to each other.”

Berisha sought Wednesday to link elections to an agreement by all parties to end the debate about what happened to hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into shady investment schemes that collapsed early this year.

About 1,500 Italian, French and Spanish soldiers, part of an Italian-led multinational force, are in Albania. They are to secure the country’s roads and bridges and protect humanitarian aid deliveries.