PRISTINA (Reuters) - The United Nations handed control of bus and train services for Kosovo Serbs to the province’s ethnic Albanian leaders yesterday, in a new test of their commitment to minority rights as they bid for independence. The UN mission running Kosovo had been in charge of “humanitarian” bus routes and the “Freedom of Movement Train” that 100,000 Serbs scattered across Kosovo rely on to send children to schools and make shopping trips. Many Kosovo Serbs, ghettoized since the end of the 1998-99 war and pullout of Serb forces, refuse to venture into urban centers dominated by Kosovo’s 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority, where they expect discrimination as well as fearing attack.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Once a haven for car thieves and cigarette smugglers, Europe’s newest independent state Montenegro will shortly become a member of Interpol, the global police organization dedicated to fighting organized crime. Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble, who is visiting the Adriatic coast republic of some 650,000 people ahead of its admission to the body, said Montenegro was welcome. “The Interpol view is there is no place terrorists, organized criminals and human traffickers should be able to hide,” Noble told Reuters by telephone from the Montenegrin capital Podgorica late on Wednesday. Montenegro is expected to be formally accepted into the organization in September.

The international community’s top envoy in Bosnia yesterday slammed ruling parties on the eve of the opening of the general election campaign for obstructing the Balkan country’s EU integration process. “Of the legislative agenda that I set out in my speech to Parliament (three months ago), not one law has been adopted,” Christian Schwarz-Schilling told reporters. The German diplomat said that “governing parties have primary responsibility” for the slow progress in enacting laws that are a condition for Bosnia to build closer ties with the European Union. (AFP)

Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen voiced support yesterday for Bulgaria’s timely European Union entry, but stressed the need for further reforms and more effective efforts to fight corruption and crime. Denmark was looking forward to welcoming Bulgaria into the bloc on January 1, Fogh Rasmussen told reporters after meeting with Bulgarian counterpart Sergei Stanishev. “However, the European Commission raised some concerns in the May progress report, and we hope to see further progress,” particularly in judicial reform and the fight against corruption, organized crime and money laundering, he said. (AP)