By Rob Cameron BBC News in Tirana

Nexhmije Hoxha says she has written to the president to complain

Nexhmije Hoxha, 82, refuses to comply with official demands that she provide written evidence that her husband fought as a partisan in World War II.

The Albanian government is insisting on the evidence before it grants Enver Hoxha status as a war veteran.

Mrs Hoxha, 82 says it is a humiliation, and she has written to the president.

The Albanian authorities require testimonies from three former partisans before they will grant war veteran status.

Napalm

But Mrs Hoxha told the Reuters news agency that every Albanian knew of her husband's role as a wartime hero.

Albania has tried to erase memories of Enver Hoxha

Asking for letters of proof that her husband fought Italian and German invaders during the World War II, she said, was a humiliation.

Mrs Hoxha said she had even written to the President Alfred Moisiu, reminding him that his father had slept under the same blanket as Enver Hoxha in Albania's snow covered mountains during the war.

The president, she said, had not answered her letter.

The Albanian authorities have tried hard to exorcise the ghost of Enver Hoxha since the collapse of communism in 1991.

The dictator's body was removed from a national memorial and reburied in a public cemetery. Napalm was even used to wipe Enver Hoxha's name from a mountain side where it had been written in stone.