FLASH
Shkruar nga PamfletiThe "escape" in '97, the Greeks' fight to take Pasalimani, the meeting with Milosevic in Crete, the wanderings in nightclubs and the marriage to Xhoana, the Greek media has written an obituary for Fatos Nano.
From Kathimerini/ In the spring of 1997, as Albania was plunged into the chaos of an armed uprising by pyramid victims, a convoy of cars from the Greek diplomatic mission in Tirana was leaving for Greece.
She did not follow the usual route to Gjirokastra to cross the border through Kakavija. She chose to move northeast through Korça to enter through Kristallopigji in Follorina.
The southern corridor was controlled by armed gangs of rebellious Albanians and in the main car with the Greek flag on its front, was, accompanied by an embassy official, an important personality whom many people in the crowd would like to get rid of and for this reason had to flee.
There was the former Prime Minister of Albania, Fatos Nano, the reformist leader who in the early 1990s put Albania on the path of transition from Hoxha's harsh communism to liberal democracy. And as far as we are concerned, probably the most philohellenic and least complex prime minister of Albania.
With the outbreak of the uprising in March 1997, Nano was imprisoned in Tepelena, serving a 12-year sentence given to him, in a prosecution that was characterized internationally at the time as political revenge by Sali Berisha.
When the system collapsed, the prison doors opened and the prisoners escaped, but Nano refused to leave, as he could have done, preferring “legal release.” Under pressure from the international community and to reduce tensions and prevent the country from descending into civil war, Berisha was forced to pardon him.
However, his friends did not consider him safe even in his home in Tirana, and so he decided to flee. On the orders of Costas Simitis, then Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos mobilized the Greek embassy in Tirana, which took over the operation for him to escape.
The diplomatic convoy, escorted by armed members of the Albanian Socialist Party, quickly passed through the mountainous terrain of Elbasan and Pogradec, and without any surprises arrived at the Greek-Albanian border at Kristallopigi.
In Pisoderi of Florina, he “handed over” the high-ranking “fugitive” to the head of the political affairs department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace. Fatos Nano was now safe.
While imprisoned in Tepelena, the socialist leader gave an exclusive interview to the newspaper "Kathimerini" on May 19, 1996, in an adventurous manner, using the method of written questions and answers.
The then Socialist Party MP, the immigrant Anastas Angeli, a close friend of his, undertook to secretly enter the prison with the questions and extract the manuscripts with the answers.
It was not easy since Berisha's secret services were monitoring everyone and everything.
So, when he received the manuscripts with Nano's answers, instead of keeping them, he took them directly to a safe and predetermined place. That same night, the secret police raided his office, but the manuscripts were not there. The interview was published by media not controlled by Berisha in Albania, as well as by international networks.
"I and the Socialist Party have denounced the political nature of my imprisonment since September 1993. This was recently officially recognized by Amnesty International, declaring me a prisoner for my ideas. I continue to be in Berisha's prison for a thousand days because I publicly denounced and fought with democratic means the negative political phenomena that history has bequeathed to us. Against the communist dictatorship and Berisha's Stalinism. I am being held politically hostage for the "realpolitik" that I followed and the impact it had on the majority of Albanians," he said, among other things, at the time.
Last week, Nano passed away, ending a political journey and a tumultuous journey on a personal level.
He left a strong mark on post-communist Albania as the leader who laid the foundations, through difficult reforms, for the country's transition from Hoxha's harsh communism to liberal democracy and transformed Hoxha's arteriosclerotic Party of Labor into a modern social democratic party.
During his governments, Greek-Albanian relations flourished. Fatos Nano will go down in the history of bilateral relations as the most pro-Greek and uncomplicated prime minister towards Greece.
As a far-sighted politician, he was not tempted to feed anti-Hellenism in the traditionally suspicious Albanian public opinion, which, seized by the syndrome of hostile encirclement, saw in Greece the evil from the south (from the north was Serbia) a neighbor that has been working to cripple the country for a long time. He avoided exchanging theories of this kind in order to gain electoral benefits.
Nano's doctrine in foreign relations transformed Greece and Italy into strategic partners, and during his time an atmosphere of mutual trust was built, to the benefit of both parties and consequently of the Greek minority.
During the difficult days of exile, Nano stayed in Athens where he was preparing his return through parliamentary elections that, at the request of the international community, had been announced for June 29 and which he would easily win.
On the eve of the vote, he called a pre-election rally in Kaningos Square for Albanian immigrants in Athens.
The reaction was impressive. Albanians, the vast majority of whom were illegal at the time, emerged that night from the "dens," warehouses and basements where they were forced to hide because they had no documents, and filled the square.
At that rally, Nano also referred to our compatriots in Albania, who had taken refuge in Greece, calling on them to return to their "patriotic homes", where, as he said, "is their country".
Nationalist voices in the country, including Sali Berisha, after hearing about "patriotic homes" for the Greek minority, "rose to the roof" accusing him of being identified with Athens' undeclared aspirations against Albania.
This did not prevent him from winning the election at all, and he wisely avoided the trap of revenge, which would have led to further tensions by avoiding the initiation of criminal prosecutions against Berisha. However, a vendetta had already arisen between the two men.
Berisha, who believed that Nano's socialists, with the help of Greece, had instigated the "pyramid uprising" against him, was waiting for the opportunity to retaliate, and he was given it a year later.
On September 12, 1998, not far from the offices of the "Democratic Party", in the central square of Tirana, his close associate and leading figure of the party, Azem Hajdari, a controversial figure who was said to be involved in arms trafficking and many other dirty deeds, was murdered.
Berisha accused the socialist government and its police as moral and physical perpetrators, and Hajdar's funeral turned into an armed uprising.
Berisha's fanatical supporters, who had descended armed from his hometown of Tropoja, in northern Albania, after their leader's fiery speeches, attacked state television, from where they called on the population to take up arms.
Then, reinforced by two tanks captured from a nearby camp, they headed for the government building, which they bombed, took over, and set on fire.
Prime Minister Nano fled with his personal guards through a secret underground passage from the Hoxha era, crossing into Skopje.
"I fled because they had decided to kill me," he would later declare, according to the BBC.
The Tirana Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment with serious charges against Berisha, as the author and protagonist of the September uprising, which, however, did not proceed with Nano's intervention so that things would not escalate again.
After this, Nano resigned as prime minister, but remained a regulator of the situation in the ruling party, and after the 2002 elections he became prime minister again, until 2005.
In a strategically important choice, in March 1998, a few months after being re-elected prime minister and trying to restore order in the country, Nano wanted to negotiate with Greece the “reconstruction” of the strategically important Pashalimani naval base in Vlora, which had been looted and destroyed by rebels.
Which, however, the Turks also claimed to use as a base for their war fleet to monitor shipping in the Adriatic and central Mediterranean. They eventually took it.
According to what was later revealed by the then Albanian military attaché in Ankara, Hajro Limaj, the agreement had dark implications, money, political adventures and a Greek aspect.
The Albanian government allegedly negotiated it initially with Greece, but the Turks gave a strong bribe under the table and took it, while the mastermind of the whole story, Minister of Defense ZM (it is not clear which minister this is, pencil note) lost his ministerial chair.
During the 1997 unrest, M. was one of the Socialist Party officials who maintained close social relations with senior PASOK officials in Greece, and in the Nano government that emerged from the June elections, he took over the portfolio of Minister of Defense.
Through his connections with Simitis government ministers, he sought, apparently on Nano's orders, to negotiate a package of agreements with Athens that, among other things, provided for Greece to take over the reconstruction of the Pasha Limani base, the construction of oil depots in Durrës and Vlora, the construction of road axes, etc.
In this package, an important position was given to the provision by the Greek side of a financial aid of 10 billion drachmas to strengthen and rebuild the Albanian army, while in its informal part the Greek side would benefit from the creation of 3 military cemeteries for the burial of the remains of the Greek fallen of the 1940s and the construction of a military hospital in Gjirokastra. However, the Turks had moved earlier.
On May 9, 1997 – Nano had not yet become prime minister – and as Albania was burning, the then Turkish Minister of Defense visited Tirana and on September 12 he would repeat the visit, this time when Nano was in government.
On December 26, his Albanian counterpart would return the visit, traveling to Ankara.
Of course, this was not a simple move within the framework of bilateral relations between the two countries, and this quickly became apparent.
According to the then Albanian military attaché in Ankara, during official talks with the Turkish side, M., completely unexpectedly and outside the agreed protocol, put on the table a request that the Turks rebuild the Pashaliman base.
The military attaché, surprised by the turn his minister took in the talks, would later report: "In a confidential discussion, the minister told me: 'We cannot accept that the military port of Saranda or the Port of Pasha be given for reconstruction to a neighboring country and for a long period of time, as Greece wants.
We have given them the answer and have shown Durrës or the Port of Shëngjin further north, but they insist on military bases near their borders. If we give them such bases, then who do we want them for and against whom will we use them in the event of a military conflict in the south…?'”
The "deep state" with its perpetual fear of Greek infiltration had done its job, bringing Nano to a fait accompli.
Later, as was written in the Albanian press, M. "confidentially" revealed in political and military circles in his homeland that the Turks gave 3 times more money for Pashaliman than the Greeks did.
After signing the agreement, in March 1998, Nano dismissed M. from his position as minister and, according to Limaj, his dismissal was not unrelated to the Pashaliman issue.
In fact, Nano is reported to have stated regarding the dismissal that "the bone was too big for a minister to lick...", taking a shot at the reason for his minister's dismissal.
Regardless of what happened to the Vlora base, relations between Athens and Tirana during Nano's government developed in a mild climate.
Simitis visited Albania twice, and Nano visited Greece twice. On one of them he participated in the inter-Balkan leaders' conference in Crete in October 1997.
There, at Simitis’s initiative, he met with the nation’s great “enemy,” Slobodan Milosevic. The meeting took place in a hotel in Agia Pelagia where, according to a diplomat who was involved in the entire preparation, “Simitis took them both by the hand, entered the room where, after making an introduction, he left and left them alone, accompanied by a bottle of tsikoudia (a type of Greek brandy), which when they came out was found to be empty.”
Although nothing was agreed upon, a storm erupted in his homeland with cries of "treason" and accusations that he "embrace the enemy", "sell out Kosovo" which was then preparing for an uprising, etc. Since the meeting, according to his critics, there has been a "Greek finger" omnipresent in Albania.
Fatos Nano's relations with Greece went far beyond the political and diplomatic sphere.
Even when he was prime minister, he often "escaped" from Tirana and took refuge, passing under the "official radar", in Thessaloniki where his two children studied at a private college.
The visits were combined with entertainment in nightclubs – he was a fanatic of the famous Peggy Zina – and taverns, sometimes until dawn.
During one of these bohemian wanderings, "his heart was placed in the arms of a beautiful Greek woman, Xhoana, whom he married for the second time, in the Orthodox church of Tirana, since he himself was an Orthodox Christian - a chorister of Archbishop Anastasios."
He gradually withdrew from politics and lived, in failing health, between Vienna and Tirana, with the expectation that at some point the political elite would call him to the post of President of the Republic, a wish (of his) that was never fulfilled.
At the funeral service in the Orthodox Cathedral of Tirana (it's a mistake, as it should be in the Palace of Congresses, with a pencil), the "wooden" farewell speeches of friends and political enemies were eclipsed by the final farewell of his Greek wife.
"Here, a quarter of a century ago, I, a young girl, fell in love with Fatos. At the time I didn't understand why, but now I know. I was in love, not only with Fatos as a person, but I was also in love with the vision of a different Albania, an Albania that had to move away from barbarism, revenge and follow a different course, a modern political and European course.
I would find these in Fatos. He walked through the mud of politics without being soiled by it. He had a big heart, ready to forgive, to understand. Revenge was a foreign quality to him. He proved this when he led the country after his unjust imprisonment, when Albania was on the verge of civil war. He was straightforward, sometimes stubborn, but honest with himself and others. He loved this country with all his heart,” she said.
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