STOCKHOLM (AP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday he favors a Swedish proposal to open “new chapters” in the European Union’s relationship with Turkey – as long as it doesn’t lead to full-fledged membership. Unlike Sarkozy, Sweden is positive about Turkey’s bid to join the 27-member bloc. “France will not be against the opening of new chapters under Swedish chairmanship, but of course this chapter should allow that Turkey should be an associated member of Europe and not a full-fledged member,” Sarkozy told reporters in Stockholm. The French president also noted that Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, as head of the EU presidency, represents the entire Union on the Turkey issue – not just Sweden. “Of course we would like to move ahead in a positive way, Europe works in this way, and I would not like to create any problems for the prime minister and he doesn’t want to create any problems for me. This is how we work,” Sarkozy said.

BUCHAREST (AP) – Eight British school students have been hospitalized in northeast Romania with swine flu, an embassy official said yesterday. Embassy communications officer Raluca Bragarea said the group arrived in Romania on June 25 as part of an annual exchange program to work with disabled children in the northeast city of Iasi. The British teens, aged 16-18, are in a group of 19 students and three teachers from the private Sevenoaks School in Kent. The eight were hospitalized at the weekend. They are currently in isolation at Iasi’s Hospital for Infectious Diseases.

SARAJEVO (AFP) – A Bosnian court jailed a former Serb paramilitary soldier for 18 years yesterday over the killing, torture and rape of Muslim civilians at the start of the country’s 1992-1995 war. Momir Savic, 50, was found guilty of “persecution, murder, imprisonment, rape and other inhumane acts directed against Bosniak (Muslim) civilians,” the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said in a statement. The crimes took place in the eastern towns of Visegrad and Rudo in 1992, the year Serb forces killed and expelled almost all Muslims and Croats from the region during a campaign of “ethnic cleansing.”

A former spokeswoman of the UN’s Yugoslav war crimes court, on trial for contempt, should be fined but a jail sentence would not be justified, a prosecutor told the court yesterday. In a closing speech to the court, which formerly employed Florence Hartmann, prosecutor Bruce MacFarlane urged the court to impose a financial penalty. “A sum of between 7,000 and 15,000 euros [9,700 and 20,000 dollars] would be quite appropriate... A prison sentence would absolutely not be justified,” he said. The 46-year-old journalist, a French national, is charged before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for writing about two confidential appeals chamber decisions in a 2007 book on the ICTY and in a later published article. (AFP)

A Serbian court sentenced yesterday 11 Muslims to prison terms ranging from six months to 13 years for plotting to kill Serbia’s top Muslim cleric and planning to attack a police station, a court spokeswoman said. “They were arrested near the town of Novi Pazar in 2007 and were found guilty of conspiring to carry out acts of terrorism,” Maja Kovacevic said. All 11 are said to be followers of the puritanical Sunni Muslim Wahhabi sect. Senad Ramovic, identified as the leader of a group was sentenced to 13 years in prison, while eight were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to eight years. Two members of the group were sentenced to six months in prison. “Among other things they had planned the assassination of Serbia’s chief imam as well as to attack a police station and a mosque in Novi Pazar,” Kovacevic said. (Reuters)

Serbia, home to a reactor once deemed the world’s most dangerous, reached an agreement yesterday on nuclear energy cooperation with the United Nations atomic agency, a report said. Signed by visiting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic, the memorandum is in addition to an existing agreement on inspections of nuclear facilities. “This protocol demonstrates that the international community can count on Serbia in the fight against terrorism and against nuclear proliferation,” the two said in a joint statement quoted by Beta news agency. (AFP)