Mission to Tirana will assess Albania's needs

THE EU is to send a high-level mission to Albania to assess how best it can respond to the country's needs, EU Foreign Ministers agreed at an informal weekend meeting.

The delegation, which will be led by the Dutch diplomat, Count Jan D'Assembourg, will pave the way for increased EU assistance, including advisers, to help rebuild the country's shattered administration, finances, and police and armed forces.

Any question of involvement of military forces, even in an advisory role, would require UN Security Council approval, the Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Spring, said yesterday.

Reporting on the decision the Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr Hans van Mierlo, said the Dutch ambassador in Tirana had received an assurance from President Sali Berisha that he would resign if the elections in June go against his Democratic Party.

The cautious outcome of the ministerial meeting reflected a decisive rebuff to attempts by France and Italy to raise the possibility of a significant intervention force. The initiative was angrily attacked by the British and German ministers, the latter further irritated diplomats say, by France's failure to warn its closest ally of the move in advance.

The British Foreign Secretary firmly rejected suggestions that there was an analogy with the EU's failure to act in former Yugoslavia, pointing out that the crisis in Albania was of a completely different character - not civil war but anarchy. The need was to help Albanians restore order and to that end the only role EU police and military officers could play was advisory.

The OSCE mediator, Mr Franz Vranitzky, a former Austrian chancellor, said on Friday there was no alternative to foreign intervention and the international envoy in Bosnia, Mr Carl Bildt, said limited military intervention was "essential", to avoid another foreign policy humiliation.

Intervention would "send a signal to other parts of the region that Europe will deal more decisively with potential threats to stability than was the case in the beginning at the Yugoslav crisis ... We must not fail again."

Diplomats yesterday were emphasising, however, that reports from Tirana suggest the situation is cooling.