TIRANA, May 23 – The Foreign Minister, Olta Xhaçka said that the issue of Fredi Beleri’s arrest and imprisonment belongs to justice in the meeting she held with the Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Dendias in Brussels on Monday.
In a statement to the media on Tuesday regarding the informal meeting between the foreign ministers of the member states of the European Union, as well as the foreign ministers of the Western Balkans, within the Council of Foreign Affairs of the European Union, Xhaçka disclosed details of the conversation with the Greek counterpart.
“I congratulated him on the victory of his party in Sunday’s elections and expressed our sincere wish that despite the different views on the Beleri issue, we can continue our friendly cooperation for which we have already opened a new page. Minister Dendias presented his position and I made our position very clear that this is neither a political issue nor a human rights issue,” declared the Albanian top diplomat. She underlined that this is a matter of respect for the law for every Albanian citizen.
The minister noted that “it is a matter of fighting against the phenomenon of vote buying, as one of the main recommendations of the OSCE-ODIHR. Just like Albania, Greece made arrests precisely for accusations of vote buying in compliance with the law.”
According to her, we are dealing with a case that belongs to the judiciary and there is no place for political influences from inside and outside Albania in it.
“We have engaged in a serious way for the independence of the judiciary just like the European Union and its member countries have also invested,” said Albanian FM. /argumentum.al
