The Greek minority
When, on the eve of the 1992 elections, the Albanian government banned Omonia, the Greek ethnic party, from the vote, its leaders established the Union of Human Rights Party (KEAD) as a symbolic group purporting to represent the ethnic Greek population and those who have a Greek conscience. Vassilis Melos, who was then appointed KEAD president, might have lacked significant political character but proved to be very effective in intrigue. He cooperated with President Sali Berisha’s regime and gradually detached KEAD from Omonia, taking on the latter in a personal feud. The skirmishes between Melos and Omonia were continuous. In the fall of 1999, the two sides signed a written agreement, but Melos violated the commitments he had undertaken. A solution was reached when KEAD recently managed to summon an assembly which elected former Omonia President Vangelis Doulis as the new KEAD president. The issue would not be of importance had Melos not done what many of those who knew him had predicted. On top of the fact that he withheld the offices and the subsidies that the Albanian state provided to KEAD (and the other parliamentary groups), he also indulged in unprecedented mud-slinging against Greece. The man who has benefited through Greece more than anyone else in Albania surpassed Greece’s fiercest enemies. Melos, with the ease of an immoral political opportunist, launched into anti-Greek rhetoric in an attempt to mobilize the mechanisms of the Albanian State to support his attempt to return to the KEAD leadership. He even accused former Prime Minister Ilir Meta of playing into Greece’s hands and giving Athens control over KEAD. What is most important, however, is that recent developments have opened the way for putting an end to this former dualism. Merging KEAD with Omonia is one solution. KEAD is, of course, an Albanian institution, which aspires to represent all those who endorse its principles, regardless of their nationality. This, however does not change the fact that it draws most of its support from ethnic Greeks and those who have a Greek conscience. In effect, it has not only the right but also the obligation to safeguard their legitimate interests.
