[ALBSA-Info] Albania to Hold Local Elections on October 1/Albania PM Says Needs Italy Help to Fight Smugglers

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

1. Albania to Hold Local Elections on October 1
2. Albania PM Says Needs Italy Help to Fight Smugglers
  

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#1.
TIRANA, July 28 (Reuters) - Albanian President Rexhep Meidani said on Friday 
that local elections would be held on October 1, marking the first test of 
popular support for the ruling Socialist-led coalition. 

``If the candidates do not win a majority in the first round, a second round 
will be held on October 15,'' Meidani said in a statement. 

The polls at 5,000 ballot stations pit Prime Minister Ilir Meta's Socialists 
against the main opposition Democratic Party of former president Sali 
Berisha. 

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it would 
bring in 170 monitors to observe voting. Previous elections during the 
impoverished Balkan nation's 10 years of democracy have been wracked by 
unrest. 

``These elections are a very important test for the fragile Albanian 
democracy,'' said Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, OSCE chief in Albania. 

The lead-up to the vote has been tense. Berisha's Democrats have said they 
will take part, but will not recognise results announced by the seven-member 
central election commission because they say it is controlled by the 
Socialists. 

The Democrats will instead only accept results announced by local 
commissions, which include members of their own party, the Social Democrats 
and other parties. 

The Socialist-led coalition has been in power since ousting the Democrats in 
1997.


#2.
Albania PM Says Needs Italy Help to Fight Smugglers

ROME, July 28 (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato was due in 
the Albanian capital Tirana for an official visit on Friday when he was 
expected to discuss with Meta the problem of trafficking of humans into 
Europe via Italy's shores. 

Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta told Amato that his government had passed a 
tougher law against trafficking and agreed that a joint commission should 
monitor its implementation. 

``This law provides us with the legal base to confiscate the speedboats and 
impose harsher sanctions on their owners as well as the workshops that repair 
illegal boats,'' Meta said. 

``We have a good new law which will allow us to stop the smugglers on the 
sea, on land and in the workshops where they fix up their motorised 
dinghies,'' Meta told Rome's La Repubblica newspaper in an interview. 

``But certainly we are waiting for a big show of support from Italy,'' he 
added. 

Earlier this week, two Italian policemen and two suspected smugglers were 
killed after a police motor launch was rammed by a boat smuggling immigrants 
from Albania. 

Outrage at the incident prompted opposition calls for Amato to cancel his 
trip to Albania. 

Meta, 32, gave no details on the new laws, but said he was sure illegal 
trafficking of humans -- which earns smugglers up to $3,000 per person for 
passage across the Adriatic -- could be stopped if all Mediterranean states 
worked together. 

``It needs to be a collective effort because Italy is not the final 
destination for most of these desperate people but just a step on the 
journey,'' he said. 

Italy's centre-right opposition, which many expect to form the next 
government after elections are held sometime in the next nine months, has 
called for changes to Italian law which would allow customs police to fire on 
smugglers' boats. 

``Arms would not resolve anything. It is an idiotic idea which will only 
jeopardise the lives of innocents,'' Meta said. 

Italy was swamped with refugees from Albania with the fall of communism in 
the early 1990s, and since then organised crime gangs have made fortunes 
smuggling immigrants across the narrow sea that divides the two countries. 

Italy said this month it had arrested some 40 people in a covert operation 
against a Croat-Chinese immigrant smuggling ring, which transported 5,000 
Chinese this year through the Balkans and then into Italy via the port of 
Trieste.