Staff safety fears hamper Union in Albania

Date: 24/09/1998

By Simon Taylor

INCREASING fears about the safety of Western European Union officials in Albania are preventing the EU from stepping up its police presence in the country.

Top foreign ministry officials meeting in New York earlier this week rejected a call by German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel and his Italian counterpart Lamberto Dini for an international police mission to be set up to “support the Albanian authorities in maintaining law and order”.

Kinkel and Dini warned in a letter to the Austrian presidency last week that a repeat of the events of spring 1997, “when all public order collapsed and Albania sank into anarchy and chaos”, had to be avoided.

They also called for EU action to stem the flow of weapons from northern Albania into Kosovo and Union funds to help deal with Albania's refugee problem.

However, several other member states fear that armed European police officers would have to be accompanied by regular troops to guarantee their safety, because of the threat posed by roving criminal gangs, especially in the northern part of the country.

For some, this entails far more commitment on the ground than they wish to sanction. The furthest most foreign ministers are prepared to go is to support a call for the WEU to speed up a study into options for European involvement in policing in Albania.

The WEU, of which ten EU members states are full members and the other five observers, has been running a mission in Tirana since last year, when an outbreak of political violence threatened to tip the country into chaos. Its task is to train local law enforcement officers and offer advice on policing to authorities.

The political situation in Albania has deteriorated in recent weeks with the assassination of opposition Democratic Party leader Azem Hajdari.

EU foreign ministers will try to agree on what action to take at their next meeting in Luxembourg on 5-6 October.

Meanwhile, EU plans to give Albania a 20-million-ecu loan have been delayed by the country's growing political problems. A German official said approval for the loan, designed to help Albania's trade balance, would not be given for several weeks, although this was partly due to a delay in the European Parliament giving its opinion.