Officials challenge speaker who called for Rama to resign

Albanian officials have challenged the credibility of a former Kosovo Liberation Army member who read protesters’ demands for Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign.

Dritan Goxhaj read the demands outside Rama’s office in Tirana, after more than three weeks of protests.

The protesters want Rama to step down and a caretaker government, not run by political parties, to take over for 12 months.

Rama called Goxhaj a manipulator and questioned his record in the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian force that fought Serbian rule in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

He published a 1999 document which he said showed Goxhaj had left a Kosovo Liberation Army training centre instead of going to fight.

Defence Minister Ermal Nufi also said Goxhaj had no link to the wartime force and accused him of damaging Albanian national interests.

Rama has also claimed parts of the protest are linked to Iranian interests.