Albanian President Pledges to Quell Violence

VIENNA —  President Ramiz Alia of Albania on Saturday blamed enemies of the state for recurring political riots and defended the legacy of his hard-line predecessor, Enver Hoxha.

In a speech broadcast by the official ATA news agency, Alia pledged to uphold law and order and said that instigators of riots in Tirana, the capital, and elsewhere would be punished.

“We will not allow Albania to become a holocaust of the political ploys of various oppositions or the aims of external enemies,” he said.

Alia appealed for public support in controlling what he called “vandal and terrorist elements” and warned against attempting to divide the ruling Communist Party.

Official figures were that four people died during three days of anti-Communist rioting in Tirana, where a statue of Hoxha, symbol of Stalinist rule in Albania for more than 45 years, was toppled.

Opposition sources in Tirana, meanwhile, reported new unrest in the southern town of Fieri. Pro-government peasants, bused in from the country, tried to repair damage to a Hoxha statue there and clashed with townspeople.

The sources said police fired shots to disperse the crowd but no injuries were reported.

“The figure of Enver Hoxha cannot be torn down because it personifies the biography of the people, the history of new Albania,” Alia said. “The (Communist) Party and the Albanian people are proud of having had such a leader.”

Genc Pollo, a spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party, said he was surprised at the harsh tone of Alia’s speech.

“I was unpleasantly surprised to hear Alia mention the opposition in the same breath as unidentified external enemies,” he said.

The Democratic Party issued a statement accusing government and Communist Party hard-liners of provoking the violence to justify a military coup.

Alia, the successor to Hoxha, who died in 1985, dismissed the hard-line Cabinet of Adil Carcani on Friday and installed a new Cabinet composed mainly of party technocrats. He also set up a presidential council, which threatened to impose a state of emergency if order were not restored.

Officials said the four people killed Friday were shot near the Tirana military academy in clashes between liberal officers and hard-liners who wanted to restore Hoxha’s statue in the center of the city.

Albania has been swept by political unrest since student demonstrations began in December.