DESPITE indications last night that Albania was inching away from civil war, The Irish Times learned that President Sali Berisha's supporters were recruiting young men in Tirana to fight in the south.
A tentative peace agreement was reached yesterday between Mr Berisha and opposition politicians, and a delegation from the Dutch EU presidency, led by the foreign minister, Mr Hans van Mierlo, said the President appeared to be considering holding elections.
The situation in the three rebel towns and regions appeared calmer but the sinister moves were behind the scenes.
Settlement efforts appeared to have split the political opposition and were accompanied by attempts by Mr Berisha's supporters in Tirana to raise a corps of "civilian volunteers" to travel south and fight the rebels.
In his first move since declaring a state of emergency last Sunday, Mr Berisha called a number of opposition leaders for talks. The result was a document offering an amnesty to rebels who handed in their arms as well as continued - political dialogue in the form of round-table discussions.
But members of Mr Berisha's Democratic Party (DP) were simultaneously offering arms to young supporters and asking them to travel south to fight.
Groups of young men gathered outside the DP headquarters in Tirana as the political talks were in progress and a German newsagency quoted a "high-ranking functionary" of the DP as saying people were being armed on a "volunteer basis"
A number of young men confirmed to The Irish Times that, recruitment was in progress but that about 75 per cent of those asked to fight had refused. Albania's conscript army seems to have been unwilling to engage the southern insurgents, and the SHIK secret police has been busy controlling the north and Tirana.
While uniformed police looked clumsy and ineffective in their ill-fitting blue-grey uniforms and caps - usually several sizes too small - perched precariously on the back of their heads, the capital was also patrolled by groups of armed men wearing leather jackets and dark glasses.
The political declaration which emerged from yesterday's talks by no means received unanimous support. Mr Fatos Lubonja, an independent intellectual who is a leading member of the opposition umbrella group, Forum for Democracy, said after the talks Mr Berisha had gone out of his way to split his opposition, and had succeeded.
"Round table talks are all very well," Mr Lubonja said, "but Albania needs a quick solution and this would have to include a commitment to holding new elections." The DP was returned to power last year in elections which were widely believed to have been rigged.
Yesterday's agreement called for the re-establishment of order, including the surrender of arms over a 48-hour period beginning at 6 a.m. today with an amnesty for those who do so, provided they have not "directly committed crimes". It also called for an interruption of military operations, an examination of fraudulent investment schemes which brought the crisis to a head and continuing dialogue between government and opposition.
On the military front there appeared to be a stand-off yesterday in the south between the armed forces and the rebels who had blown up bridges to isolate the cities of Vlore and Sarande and the ethnically Greek town of Delvina.
