Trouble in Albania

Barely seven years after it shed a fanatical communist regime, Albania veers between anarchy and a brutal new dictatorship. Either would be disastrous for Europe's poorest nation and the volatile Balkan region surrounding it. Washington and other Western governments must do their best to broker a political compromise as a precondition for emergency financial relief.

That will not be easy. The most promising way out of Albania's deepening crisis would be for President Sali Berisha to form a broad-based government including opposition leaders and prepare for new presidential elections to be held by early next year. But Mr. Berisha on Monday ignored the warnings of foreign diplomats and proceeded with his own re-election by a Parliament of political loyalists. That brazen action is unlikely to placate the thousands of enraged Albanians who have taken to the streets to protest the government's failure to protect their savings from pyramid schemes. Deserted by much of his army and regular police, Mr. Berisha has imposed a state of emergency and instructed the country's notorious secret police force to enforce it. On Sunday a gang of pro-regime arsonists burned the offices of the country's most important opposition newspaper, Koha Jone.

The attempt to suppress a broad popular revolt by force may not succeed. It will surely make it impossible for concerned neighbors, like Greece, to provide the kind of emergency financial relief that they might otherwise offer in their own self-interest.

Continued instability in Albania would likely send refugees streaming into Greece and other neighboring countries. It could also fuel unrest among the large ethnic Albanian populations in Macedonia and the Kosovo region of Serbia.

With Albania nearing a flash point, U.S. and Western assistance should be suspended until the Berisha government starts moving from repression toward political conciliation.

-- The New York Times