PRISTINA (AP) - US Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman arrived in Kosovo yesterday to push for improved security and minority rights ahead of elections in the ethnically tense province. Grossman met with Soren Jessen-Petersen, the top UN official in Kosovo, and Lt. Gen. Yves de Kermabon, the commander of NATO-led peacekeepers in the province. General elections in the province are scheduled for Oct. 23 but Kosovo’s Serb minority has threatened to boycott the polls, citing a lack of security. Before departing for Kosovo, Grossman said in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, that Serbian leaders should encourage the province’s Serbs to vote. But Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica suggested he would not urge participation, saying in a statement issued after talks with the US delegation that only “concrete guarantees” of self-rule would encourage the province’s Serbs to vote.

ANKARA (AP) - Turkish troops killed five suspected leftist militants from an outlawed Marxist group in clashes in central Turkey that left a soldier dead, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The clashes occurred in the central Turkish province of Tokat late Wednesday, when the militants reportedly ignored a call to surrender and opened fire on security forces.

The number of heroin addicts in Bucharest appears to be dropping, with some 24,000 people — or about 1 percent of the capital’s population — still using the drug, a government agency said yesterday. That’s down significantly from the some 35,000 people authorities said were using heroin in 2000. (AP)

The Bosnian election commission called on voters yesterday to cast ballots in municipal elections this coming weekend, fearing low turnout for the first vote organized by authorities in the former Yugoslav republic. “I urge you to come out and vote” tomorrow, said a member of the Bosnian election commission, Suad Arnautovic. Over 2.3 million eligible voters are to elect new municipal councils and mayors in 142 municipalities throughout the country. However, a recent poll conducted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), showed that only less than 50 percent of Bosnians plan to vote tomorrow. (AP)

A moderate earthquake measuring 4.3 on the open-ended Richter scale struck Turkey in its eastern province of Erzincan yesterday, the Anatolia news agency said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The tremor struck at 12.42 p.m. local time with its epicenter in the province’s town of Ilic, the Istanbul-based Kandilli Seismological Institute said. (AFP)