TIRANA (AFP) - Albania’s center-right Democratic Party under former president Sali Berisha has won this month’s parliamentary elections, which have been tarnished by allegations of fraud, officials said yesterday. The electoral commission said the Democrats and their allies had gained 73 of 140 seats in Parliament, compared to the outgoing ruling Socialist-led block’s 64. Counting was still going on in three of 100 electoral districts almost two weeks after the July 3 vote, officials said. The commission has received scores of complaints about alleged fraud and other irregularities in the polls.

IVESTI (AP) - Thousands of people were yesterday evacuated from their homes after several days of heavy rain as Romania struggled to deal with new floods affecting its eastern regions. In the eastern village of Ivesti, hundreds of residents were stranded on rooftops as the water rose to a height of 3 meters. Authorities in the nearby city of Galati were on alert, as the Siret River reached record levels and threatened this industrial city of 300,000. The government has asked for international help to assist thousands of flood victims, Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu said. The floods have killed at least one person in central Romania, and another four people were missing in an eastern region.

The extradition of top fugitive Ratko Mladic to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, remains essential for Serbia-Montenegro’s prospects of joining the European Union and NATO, the country’s foreign minister and his Dutch counterpart said yesterday. “Without this extradition, all our efforts to join Europe remain null,” Vuk Draskovic said after talks with Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot. “This is a moral issue of top priority for Europe and for us, everything regarding our future depends on this.” (AP)

Bulgaria’s newly elected Parliament yesterday vowed to speed up reforms to ensure the country’s timely accession to the European Union on January 1, 2007, it said in a common declaration. “Our top priority is to ensure Bulgaria’s EU accession on January 1, 2007 and its full-fledged participation in the work of the European institutions,” the declaration stated. (AFP)