[ALBSA-Info] Smuggler Boat Kills Two Police off Italy/Yugo Army Kicks Albanian Visitors from Montenegro

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

1. Smuggler Boat Kills Two Police off Italy
2. Yugo Army Kicks Albanian Visitors from Montenegro
  

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#1.
Smuggler Boat Kills Two Police off Italy

OTRANTO, Italy, July 24 (Reuters) - Two Italian policemen and at least one 
immigrant were killed on Monday after a police motor launch was rammed by a 
boat smuggling immigrants from Albania, police said. 

The incident happened before dawn as the police boat searched the coastline 
for smugglers violating Italian waters. 

Police recovered the bodies of one officer and one immigrant. The corpses of 
the other officer and at least one other immigrant were still missing. 

The incident has provoked outrage from politicians, with some calling on 
Prime Minister Giuliano Amato to cancel a visit to Albania scheduled for 
Friday. 

The Albanian government also came in for severe criticism. 

``Italy should suspend all forms of aid to Albania because the government is 
an accomplice of these traffickers and their cargo of immigrants, arms and 
drugs,'' said Alfredo Mantovano of the far-right National Alliance party. 

Police said their boat, with four police officers on board, was rammed by the 
smugglers' rubber dinghy a few hundred metres off the coast of the southern 
town of Santa Cesarea Terme soon after it had landed an unspecified number of 
immigrants. 

All four policemen and at least two of the smugglers were knocked overboard 
in the incident. 

``After the collision when we were all in the water, I heard one of my 
colleagues cry for help but he was too far away,'' Marshal Sebastiano Inserra 
told Italian television. 

``I managed to get to another of my colleagues but he was already dead,'' he 
added. 

Amato expressed the government's condolences to the police authorities of the 
region: ``We bow in memory to the servants of the state who died in the 
defence of law and order, of justice and of us citizens.'' 

Italy was swamped with refugees from Albania with the fall of communism there 
in the early 1990s. Since then, organised crime gangs in Albania and Italy 
have made fortunes smuggling immigrants across the Adriatic. 

Apart from Albanians, Kurds, Iraqis, Africans and Chinese have been among 
immigrant cargo ferried by traffickers from Albania almost on a weekly basis. 

Pier Ferdinando Casini of the centre-right opposition said the time had come 
for the government to order police to shoot at those in charge of the large 
dinghies if they failed to stop on command. 

Despite government attempts to crack down on traffickers, thousands are 
believed to land on Italy's shores each year, mostly in remote coves on the 
southeast coastline nearest to Albania.


#2.
Yugo Army Kicks Albanian Visitors from Montenegro

SHKODER, Albania, July 24 (Reuters) - Albanian police said on Monday that the 
Yugoslav army had turned away hundreds of Albanians trying to visit 
Montenegro, Serbia's reluctant partner in the Yugoslav federation. 

The action by the army, loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, 
contravenes an accord between Montenegro and Albania under which Albanians do 
not need a visa to visit their northern neighbour. 

``The Yugoslav army has turned back all Albanian citizens who crossed into 
Montenegro on the pretext they did not have a federal visa,'' said local 
police chief Zija Hasa. 

Yugoslavia severed diplomatic relations with Albania after NATO launched an 
air campaign against its bases last March to stop the Kosovo conflict, saying 
that Albania had helped the alliance attack its territory. 

Some 300 Albanians were forced back at the Yugoslav army checkpoint at Bozaj, 
three kilometres (2 miles) from the border crossing where Montenegrin police 
had let them through. 

Those turned back said there were three times as many troops, tanks and 
armoured cars than usual at the army checkpoint, which had been reinforced 
with concrete. 

``Belgrade wants to keep fires burning in the Balkans,'' Albanian foreign 
ministry spokesman Sokol Gjoka told reporters, adding that the government was 
closely monitoring the situation. 

Montenegrin radio, monitored in the northern Albanian town of Shkoder, also 
said that some 1,000 Albanians on holiday in Montenegro had been told to 
return home by July 30.