Hired guns crack down in Tirana

Emma Daly finds a fearful calm in the Albanian capital as the EU agrees to offer aid

Life in mutinous Albania has been compared in the past few days to scenes from a spaghetti Western, but now it's official: Tirana is a frontier town in which the sheriff, still controlled by President Sali Berisha, is deputising willing citizens and handing them guns with alarming abandon.

A rather sinister order is starting to prevail in the capital, thanks to the new, rigorous checkpoints set up all over town by the city's few remaining uniformed police, backed by thuggish volunteers slinging AK- 47s. At Police Station Number Two, in central Tirana, dozens of men from Albania's ill-educated north, President Berisha's heartland, jostled and queued to sign up as volunteer policemen.

"Albania is our country, we are meeting together to defend Tirana, defend Durres, defend Skhodra. For Albania, we shall die," said Muje Krypeci, a man with a paunch and a trench-coat. A patriot, perhaps, but encouraged to join in, no doubt, by promises of hard currency. The Justice Minister, Spartak Ngjeoa, a dissident jailed by former communist leader Enver Hoxha, plans to pay his ragged posse from pounds 30 to pounds 60 per day. Conscripts in the collapsing army earned about pounds 1.50 per month.

The irony is that the minister does not even know whether the uniformed police will prove loyal to the government, which is made up of opponents of Mr Berisha, especially as the Interior Ministry remains in the hands of the President's Democratic Party. Interior Ministry officials claimed the men were only being registered, and that background checks would take place before candidates were selected for the new force. However, we saw volunteers enter the police station empty-handed and walk out bearing Kalashnikovs.

The new force does not inspire much reassurance - one group at a checkpoint in Tirana on Friday opened fire on a car, killing three people. The only crumb of comfort is that at least some of the civilians bearing arms now know how to carry them. But the vast majority of those lining up at Police Station Number Two were semi-educated labourers, distinguishable by the dialect of northern Albania. The Albanian journalist we were with felt extremely exposed around such people, stalwarts of the Berisha regime, and was not keen to chat to many volunteers. "I didn't feel safe when they were in uniform," the reporter said, "let alone now."

Nevertheless, the force began by setting up multiple roadblocks across the city, patting down motorists and checking cars for illicit weapons.

There were reports of one death in the port of Durres, where thousands of panicking Albanians stormed the harbour in an attempt to scramble aboard a Greek ship sent to pick up Chinese and Iranian diplomats. Police fired in the air, but were said to have injured at least one person and killed another.

US helicopters resumed the airlift of Americans and other foreigners trapped in Albania, while the Italians, British and French collected names of potential evacuees, which certainly did not include Francesco De Candia, a smooth Italian who runs the Coca-Cola plant in Tirana.

A gaggle of armed Albanian cousins guard the Coke plant, which has been attacked by would-be looters four times in the past 24 hours.

"They want to take our cars," Mr De Candia said as he sat at a smart board-room table in the company's office. He has no intention of leaving: "Why? There is no war at the moment, there are only people who don't know what a democratic system is." He has more confidence in the police force than most of its members (many of whom have shed their uniforms for fear of retribution). "They will protect Coca-Cola because it's a symbol in Albania, a symbol of freedom."

n The European Union has agreed to send a mission to Albania to offer help in reconstruction, and will consider providing a small police force, Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said last night. "The European Union will send immediately a mission to Tirana," he told reporters.

Neal Ascherson, page 22