BELGRADE - Submitting his candidacy for the September presidential elections, Serbia’s ultranationalist leader said yesterday he hoped Slobodan Milosevic would endorse his campaign. “Milosevic’s support would mean a lot to me; it would bring in the votes of all patriots to my side,” said Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Radical Party and an ally of the former Yugoslav president now on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. “There wouldn’t be a force strong enough to stop me from winning,” Seselj told the Serbian assembly after handing in a nominating list with 13,634 signatures — more than enough to qualify him as a candidate in the Sept. 29 vote. Earlier this month, Seselj’s party nominated their chief for the post of Serbia’s president, saying he was the best assurance of stability for the larger Yugoslav republic. Seselj declared his “chief objective” was to beat Yugoslavia’s deputy prime minister, Miroljub Labus, a popular economist also running for Serbia’s presidency. (AP)

ISTANBUL - A Turkish publisher has been fined for printing a book by an American journalist about the Kurdish conflict in southeast Turkey, a defense lawyer said yesterday. An Istanbul state security court sentenced Abdullah Keskin to six months in jail on Wednesday for “spreading separatist propaganda,” but then converted the sentence into a fine of 830 million Turkish liras (about $500), lawyer Hasip Kaplan told AFP. “We have appealed against the sentence and we are also planning to complain at the European Court of Human Rights,” he said. Prosecutors had demanded up to three years in jail for Keskin, who is of Kurdish origin, for publishing a book about the Kurdish conflict by former Washington Post correspondent Jonathan Randal — “After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan.” Authorities banned the distribution of the book in January, shortly after it was published. (AFP)

Two children aged seven and 11 were killed in mudslides in Romania, becoming the latest casualties from heavy rains that have hit dozens of towns in the center and east of the country, police said yesterday. The children were killed in the southeastern town of Silistea, where about 20 homes were damaged by flooding, the sources said. Elsewhere, a man died after being struck by lightning in Zarnesti, north of the capital Bucharest, according to the sources. On Thursday, the government announced that two people were killed and at least 1,300 homes in eastern Romania destroyed by flooding in recent days brought on by heavy rains. (AFP)

A Dutch tourist died yesterday after being trapped in a fire at a bar in a Turkish resort town, a report said. Five other people were slightly injured. The Anatolia news agency said the 20-year-old tourist died in the restroom of a pub in the Aegean resort town of Bodrum. The cause of death was believed to be smoke inhalation. The fire was sparked by faulty electrical wiring, Anatolia said. (AP)