UPDATE 2-EU tells Albania to sort out crisis now

* Europe tells Albanian leaders to avoid further tension

* EU future at stake, Albanian leaders warned

* Opposition still plans Friday protest rally

(Updates with opposition call for Friday event)

By Benet Koleka

TIRANA, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The European Union issued a blunt call on Albania's government and opposition on Wednesday to act urgently to restore calm and order after three anti-government protesters were shot dead last week. [ID:nLDE70N0N2]

EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak told reporters: "I reminded your political leaders of their shared responsibility for preventing any further violence and bloodshed, the functioning of state institutions and respecting state institutions.

"No one is above the state institutions."

Lajcak met Albanian leaders in Tirana and reminded them of the bloc's role as the Balkan state aspires to membership.

"I made it clear that the European future for Albania depends very much on whether the political leaders choose to do what we ask them to do, and do it now," he said.

He said EU officials, who have tried before in vain to help end a prolonged row between the government and the opposition over the outcome of the 2009 elections, were ready to help:

"But it is now up to your politicians to make the first move in the right direction," he said.

"They know exactly what we want them to do."

The demonstrators' deaths on Friday outside the main government building marked some of the worst social unrest since the late 1990s in Albania, a NATO member. [ID:nLDE70N0N2]

The government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha said on Wednesday it had cancelled a pro-government originally planned for Saturday. But despite pressure from the United States and European Union, opposition Socialist party leader Edi Rama said his supporters still planned to hold a procession on Friday.

Denouncing "government terrorism", he said: "We want Albania to be a country in which Europe does not remain just a motto for the future, but becomes the reality of the Albanian present."

U.S. ambassador Alexander Arvizu regretted Rama's decision to hold the rally: "The differences are pretty serious, clearly. But ... where there is a will, there is a way.

"People just need to have that will," Arvizu said.

As an applicant for EU membership, Albania must fulfil numerous criteria and Brussels has lately set it an agenda of 12 points, top of which is cooperation to foster a culture of democratic cooperation and fighting corruption.

Berisha has refused to support a prosecutor's request for the detention of republican guardsmen over Friday's shootings. (Editing by Adam Tanner and Alastair Macdonald)