Albania Deploys Troops to Restore Order

TIRANA, Albania —  Parliament handed President Sali Berisha special powers to restore order Sunday after demonstrators clashed with riot police in the capital and set scores of buildings ablaze in towns across the Balkan nation.

Parliament, sitting for the first time on a Sunday since the ruling right-wing Democratic Party swept to power in a 1992 general election, voted at a crisis session to give Berisha the power to deploy troops to unblock roads and guard government buildings.

“This decision has nothing to do with a state of emergency, but the traffic, water depots, oil reserves, town halls . . . and strategic sites should not be attacked,” Foreign Minister Tritan Shehu said after the meeting.

Soldiers armed with submachine guns were already on alert in central Tirana, stationed around ministries and other strategic points.

The emergency measures were approved after thousands of demonstrators in Tirana clashed with riot police, who used batons and water cannons to disperse crowds angry over the collapse of pyramid investment schemes.

Albanian television showed aerial pictures of disturbances in 13 other towns where protesters torched town halls, courts and offices of the ruling Democrats.

Violence over the weekend was the worst seen in Albania since 1991, when about 40 people were killed in food riots.

About 30,000 people converged in central Tirana on Sunday calling on the government of Prime Minister Aleksander Meksi to resign over its handling of the pyramid schemes.

Police fired their pistols in the air over the din of shouts and screams as a core of about 3,000 protesters tried to advance toward parliament, smashing the windows of the Palace of Culture.

Leaders of the main opposition parties, who boycotted a general election in May and have refused to take up the handful of seats allocated to them in parliament, called for Sunday’s demonstrations but urged participants to be peaceful.

The main opposition Socialist Party, heirs to the former Communists, demanded the creation of an interim government of experts ahead of a new general election.

Meksi said Sunday that people who had invested in some collapsing schemes would be repaid after Feb. 5, but it was unclear whether the government had enough money at its disposal to satisfy all the impoverished Albanians.

About 84 police officers were injured in Sunday’s clashes, some of them seriously, but there were no official figures for protesters hurt in the demonstrations.

Albanian state television showed pictures of the town of Korce, 110 miles southeast of Tirana, where smoke billowed out of the burnt-out headquarters of the local Democratic Party. In Berat, 75 miles south of the capital, protesters set fire to the court and offices of the state prosecutor.