DURRËS—Yesterday in Durrës, the Albanian Eurosocialist Forum began celebrating the 7th anniversary of its founding. Dozens of young Eurosocialists celebrated at the Military Rest House. FRESSH Chairman Ilir Meta was among them yesterday. The FRES branch in Durrës is one of the strongest branches of this forum. It has had a major influence on all the positive results achieved by the Socialist Party in this city. Tomorrow at 17:00, young Eurosocialists from all over Albania will celebrate the 7th anniversary of the Eurosocialist Forum in Tirana, at the International Center of Culture.

The plan to tackle them is ready PAGE 2

As the nation mourns the victims of the mafia made up of non-EU nationals, Italian police arrest Albanian brothers, members of a mafia group PAGE 6 The two interior ministers, of Italy and Albania, Jervolino and Koçi

By Erion BRAÇE At the end of every government’s term, the record of the political force in power has two sides: “promises” and “achievements.” You constantly read the promises in party programs and platforms. After receiving the people’s vote of confidence, they become the objectives of the government program. If the parties’ technocrats write these programs full of promises, the public administration then sets about implementing a government program—the one that received the most votes. Usually, the programs are good. The government fails, however, if it does not keep the promises it made. If that happens, Albanians do not spend long searching through the 110,000 names in the public administrations to point the finger at the culprit. They quickly blame the head of this administration, the prime minister. His name is on the tip of every Albanian’s tongue—every Albanian who has patiently awaited a reward for their vote and ended up disappointed. That is what is happening now. For a year and a half, certain officials have been trying to make the Socialists bear witness. No one denies that thefts have taken place in privatization since the process began—massive ones, in fact. Thus, the Socialists’ promise to review the privatization files should not be listed as a bad objective. A new director recently arrived at the head of the National Privatization Agency. But before he had properly caught his breath, even before reaching the second floor, where his valuable office chair is, he declared that he “would not lift the layers of the lakror.” The big lakror, covering five years, and the small one, covering one year. When the Socialists said they would review privatization, they did not intend to forcibly transfer property from one owner to another. They simply meant rigorous compliance with the law. At the very least, the state was to collect the money owed from the sale of assets—or recover assets sold off in exchange for other funds, in order to forcibly make certain owners rich. (Continued on page 3)