The minister of Justice, Tudor Chiuariu, rejected yesterday the accusations according to which he would have asked the European Commission to remove from Country Report the data favourable to the National Directorate against Corruption (Ro.: DNA). He claimed that the experts of the ministry were the ones that have drawn up the papers. Chiuariu pointed out he didn't sent any official letter to the EC, to ask for modifications of the report, as it represents the result of the exchange of information between the EC and the Romanian authorities. "I had no knowledge of the content of the document before it was submitted to the European Commission", said Chiuariu, who denied, in a short press statement, the information the yesterday media brought to the public. "The European Commission requested the point of view of the Ministry of Justice on the correctness of the information in the draft report. The document published by the media represents the answer of the experts from the Ministry of Justice upon the Commission's request", claimed Chiuariu, without giving details on the experts he referred to. Howevr he denied that, by the letter sent to the EC, the request would have been to remove the paragraphs containing praises to DNA. Chiuariu also gave as an example the fact that the Romanian ministry had no objection to the phrase in the report according to which "DNA has continued to assume the commitments concerning the criminal proceedings in the cases of high corruption and to prove its capacity to put to practice this commitment". "Speculations try to shadow the conclusions of the report, which was a favourable one", the minister of Justice concluded. What to be removed from the report Cotidianul daily said, in its yesterday issue, that before the publication of the Monitoring Report, Chiuariu would have sent to the European Commission, by the agency of the Romanian representation in Brussels, a document in electronic format on its objections to the provisional version of the report. The minister would have asked the European commissioners to remove or rephrase some passages in the Report. Among the fragments that, in the minister's opinion, had to be removed from the report was also the one in which the activity of DNA was very appreciated. This is as follows: "the pace in which DNA manages and closes the investigations it carries out continue to illustrate a high level of professionalism of the multidisciplinary investigation teams within the Directorate", says the article published by Cotidianul daily. (Andrei GHICIUSCA) EC: "There were comments, but they didn't influenced the report" The EC had received, while drawing up the report presented on Wednesday, comments from the Romanian Government related to the DNA, but the final document hasn't been changed, said, yesterday, the EC spokesperson, Mark Gray, quoted by Mediafax, but he didn't specify the nature of the comments. The European Commission has checked, together with Romania, the report on justice, so as to correct factual inadvertence, but the Romanian Government cannot make comments and observations on an independent report of the Executive in Brussels, added Mark Gray. IJC asks for the resignation of the minister The organization Initiative for a Clean Justice (Ro.: IJC) asked yesterday the minister of Justice, Tudor Chiuariu, "to assume the responsibility of his mistakes and to step down, as the sole gesture of honour he can still make", according to a communiqu�. "Even if Mr. Chiuariu lays the blame on the experts from the Ministry of Justice for the phrasing of the propositions on the modification of the Report, the minister of Justice is directly responsible for any form of official communication with the structures of the European Commission", says the above mentioned source. The Initiative for a Clean Justice states that "by the arguments he tried to have the Report modified, Mr. Chiuariu chose to move the Romanian politicians' personal fight with the DNA investigations right on the European Commission's table, and bringing by this serious disservice to the country". IJC is a project launched by: Advocacy Academy, Freedom House Romania, the Group for Social Dialogue, the Academic Society in Romania, Timisoara Society and the Association "Society for Justice". (Rompres)