JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The exiled pretender to the Albanian thorne called upon Albanians Sunday to follow the example of Romania and demand freedom from the country's oppressive regime, state-run television reported.
'It is a regime which has suppressed our people to the point where not even religion is permitted,' King Leka I said in an interview on South African Broadcasting Corp. Leka's parents fled Albania in 1939 when he was only two days old. He has lived in South Africa for 10 years.
'I know for a fact from our own information in the country that there are many, even within the armed forces, who would support such an uprising,' he said.
He said two recent revolts in the country were 'very savagely repressed. I don't know what set them off.'
'Definitely there will be repercussions in Albania with the changes now taking place in Eastern Europe. The question is how well prepared those repercussions will be,' he said.
Sandwiched between Greece and Yugoslavia on the Adriatic coast, Albania has been under communist rule since the end of World War II. The country has had no contact with other communist countries since the 1960s and exists in a 'virtual vacuum,' Leka said.
Leka is the son of King Zog of Albania. His mother was a Hungarian countess said to have been distantly related to Richard Nixon. He was only two days old when the family fled the Balkan state on Apriul 7, 1939, with the invading army of Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini at their heels.
After World War II, Albania went communist under Enver Hoxha, who wielded power with his own brand of Stalinism for 41 years, until his death in April 1985.
Leka, an international arms merchant dealing in Soviet and Chinese weapons, reportedly was on the payroll ofthe Central Intelligence Agency for several years starting in the late 1960s. He denied any connection with the American government, however, and blamed the CIA for his occasional misfortunes, including his arrest in Thailand on charges of arms smuggling in 1977. He was released after six days, having explained he was acquiring arms 'to liberate my homeland.'
