Balkan States To Cooperate In Fighting Organized Crime

24 September 2005 -- Interior ministers from the former Yugoslavia states and Albania have agreed to improve their anticrime legislation and work more closely in fighting organized crime that often spreads from one country to another.
24 September 2005 -- Interior ministers from the former Yugoslavia states and Albania have agreed to improve their anticrime legislation and work more closely in fighting organized crime that often spreads from one country to another.

The ministers from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania pledged at the end of a two-day meeting in Zagreb yesterday to promote joint financial and criminal investigations of suspected underworld figures, as well as witness protection programs.

Organized crime and smuggling of people and weapons have flourished in the Balkans since the regional wars of the 1990s.
Governments have stepped up their fight against criminals and smugglers as their countries pursue the aim of joining the
European Union.

(AP)