AS THE government of Albania yesterday appealed for help to apparently reluctant western nations, more than 1,000 prisoners broke out of jails across the country. They included the leader of the opposition Socialist Party, Fatos Nano, the last communist leader, Ramiz Alia, who is accused of genocide, and all 600 inmates at Tirana's main jail, the director of prisons, Mr Bedier Coko, said yesterday.
Albania appealed frantically for foreign military intervention as the popular uprising that has the country spinning out of control threatened to degenerate into all-out civil war. But western leaders had already indicated an unwillingness to intervene.
President Sali Berisha and the Socialist Party Prime Minister, Mr Bashkim Fino, formally appealed to Europe for military help to restore order, state-run television reported.
Nano, jailed since 1993 for diverting millions of dollars of Italian aid, and Alia were among those who escaped yesterday from the capital's main prison, Mr Coko said. Around 450 other inmates were on the run from the jail in Lezka, 100 km from the capital, and another 150 had absconded from a detention centre at Kosova.
Mr Coko said later that Nano and Alia had returned to their homes in ambulances for security reasons. Nano's release had been cited on Wednesday by Mr Fino in a Greek television interview as a precondition for a genuine "government of reconciliation".
The Socialists are the successors of the communist party which, for four decades, made Albania the most reclusive of eastern Europe's communist states.
Albania's new Justice Minister, Mr Spartak Ngjela, meanwhile called for a general amnesty for all political prisoners, except those sentenced to death. He told journalists that the safety of prisoners could no longer be assured in jails around Albania.
Besides Alia, who was charged with "crimes against humanity and genocide", about 20 members of the political bureau of the erstwhile Albanian communist party who were convicted on similar charges in June fled their prison cells yesterday.
The European Union in Brussels voiced "grave concern" at the worsening crisis but ruled out support for intervention, as did NATO and the United Nations.
In New York, Italy and Albania asked for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, urging it to issue a statement before massacres broke out. At the UN, the Security Council chairman, Mr Zbigniew Wlosowicz of Poland, said that the world body was not in a position to intervene in a civil conflict.
Mr Fino earlier warned that Albania was "on the brink of civil war", but urged people to stay calm and trust the new coalition government which he said had drafted "a series of decisions and orders to resolve the situation".
The German Chancellor, Dr Kohl, cast doubt on Europe's ability to intervene militarily, a view shared by his Dutch counterpart. "If we send soldiers, then what are we going to give them for a mission?" he asked during a press conference in The Hague after talks with the Dutch Prime Minister, Mr Wim Kok.
He said the problems in Albania were of an "internal" nature, although he also called upon the latest Balkans crisis as soon as possible.
Spain, however, said it would contribute a military force if it had the support of other European nations.
For his part, Mr Kok called the Albanian crisis "extremely concerning and dramatic". But he too refused to speculate on any military intervention without first getting advice from the UN Security Council.
"We are not in a position to take a decision," he said. "We must, among other things, wait for complementary information from the Western European Union and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe."
The Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr Hans van Mierlo, who with his German counterpart, Mr Klaus Kinkel, attended yesterday's talks, said the situation was "sufficiently serious" and that Tirana's call for military intervention was "sufficiently formal ... to draw the attention of Europe". But he insisted that a military solution could "quickly cease to be the best" way out.
NATO called yesterday for dialogue in Albania and a halt to the violence, but made no mention of military intervention in the short term. The Western European Union, for its part, is to discuss the crisis today.
Meanwhile federal Yugoslavia has heightened its state of military alert and sealed its borders with Albania, the Tanjug news agency announced.
Yugoslavia is the second of Albania's neighbours to completely close its border and heighten its level of military alert, following the example of Macedonia which stepped up its state of readiness on Wednesday.
The decision had been taken because of "the possible influence it could have on the YFR's security", Tanjug said, citing a statement by the supreme defence council of the Yugoslav Federal Republic (Serbia and Montenegro).
"The level of alert of some units of the second and third Yugoslav army in the border region with the Albanian republic has been raised The border with Albania remains closed until further orders," the statement continued.
Federal Yugoslavia is particularly concerned because the southern Serbian province of Kosovo has a 90 per cent Albanian population.
Kosovo lost its status of autonomous province in 1989, when Serbian authorities dismissed its parliament. Kosovo Albanians held their elections in 1992, which were not recognised by the Serbian regime.
Meanwhile, UN forces in Macedonia, deployed along the border with Albania, were put on an orange state of alert, Col Charles Seland of the US said. Orange is one stage below red alert.