ALBANIAN PREMIER RESIGNS

Albania's month-old communist government resigned June 4 to make way for a national unity coalition that will prepare general elections next year, the state news agency ATA said. It said Prime Minister Fatos Nano announced his resignation to parliament under an all-party deal that was also intended to end a 19-day-old general strike hitting the impoverished Balkan country.

Mr. Nano said his government, appointed in early May after a Communist landslide in Albania's first free elections in nearly 50 years, would quit in favor of a coalition that would run the country until elections next May or June.

Nano told the assembly his government was resigning because it lacked political support and because of the general strike, in which some 350,000 workers pressed for drastic improvements in wages and living conditions.

ATA said the country's independent unions had agreed to suspend strikes during the administration of the new government and to call off hunger strikes by some 3,000 workers once a new election date is fixed.

A successor to Nano was not immediately announced.

The deal followed an agreement in principle among political parties June 1 to work together to resolve the deep political and economic crisis gripping Albania as it emerges from more than four decades of isolation and Stalinist rule.