PRISTINA (Reuters) – Serbs who hoped to run in next month’s elections in Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province are pulling out under threat of reprisals by Serb officials, the United Nations said yesterday. The UN administration in the Albanian majority province said it could “assume” the threats were coordinated from Belgrade, where Serb leaders have told Kosovo’s Serb minority to boycott the November 17 parliamentary and local elections. Belgrade believes that Serb participation in Kosovo elections would give legitimacy to a parliament and government determined to win independence from Serbia within months. “We have heard a lot of statements made by senior officials, especially the Ministry for Kosovo, that can be described as intimidating and threatening,” spokesman Alexander Ivanko told reporters.

THE HAGUE (AP) – Judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal yesterday rejected a Bosnian Serb’s appeal against his 15-year sentence for repeatedly raping two Muslim women during the Bosnian war. Dragan Zelenovic was sentenced last April, three months after pleading guilty to repeatedly raping the women – one of whom was 15 at the time – in 1992 during the brutal Serb takeover of Foca, southeast of Sarajevo. Delivering the original verdict, trial judge Alphons Orie Zelenovic’s said the victims “suffered the unspeakable pain, indignity and humiliation of being repeatedly violated, without knowing if they would survive the ordeal.”

Police across Europe have arrested 23 people in a series of raids targeting an international ring that smuggled hundreds of kilos of cocaine in from Colombia, Croatia’s police chief said yesterday. “In a coordinated international action, 23 people, of whom 10 were Croatians, were arrested on the territory of Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria and Croatia,” said Police Chief Marijan Benko. The gang had smuggled at least 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cocaine, with a street value of around 7 million euros, said Benko. (AFP)

Nearly three-quarters of Serbs want to pursue EU membership, but most of them (some 70 percent) would not accept independence for the breakaway Kosovo province in return for faster EU accession, a poll showed yesterday. The poll, commissioned by Serbia’s Ministry for Kosovo, showed 72 percent of Serbs are in favor of EU membership. (Reuters)