SOFIA (AP) - Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov yesterday urged the US-led multinational coalition set an end-date for the coalition’s involvement in Iraq, but said his country would not waver in its military commitment there. “It would be a really strong move for the coalition to set at least a tentative deadline (for ending its mission in Iraq), tied to the achievement of concrete goals and tasks,” Parvanov said in a public lecture on national security issues. Parvanov also warned that Bulgaria has become a terrorist target, but said that the country should not waver in its Iraqi policy “under terrorist pressure.”

SKOPJE (AP) - Officials of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are searching for information on the fate of three Slav-Macedonian contractors missing in Iraq for about 10 days, a government spokesman said yesterday. Dusko Uzinovski, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Skopje, said there was no official confirmation from Iraqi authorities that the three had been taken hostage. On Thursday, the daily newspapers Dnevnik and Vest reported that the three Slav-Macedonians, employed as contractors with the Baghdad-based Soufan Engineering construction company, were abducted on August 23.

Canada will pull out most of its 650 troops in Bosnia by October due to a scheduled transfer of the peacekeeping mission from NATO to the EU and the improved security situation, Canadian officials in Bosnia said yesterday. NATO will hand over command of a 7,500-strong peacekeeping force in Bosnia to the European Union at the beginning of 2005. Canada will keep 85 troops in the country until the end of the year, a statement from the Canadian force said. (AP)

Britain yesterday ratified an EU association agreement with Croatia that it had previously refused to sign owing to concerns about Zagreb’s alleged lack of cooperation with the UN war crimes court at The Hague, the British Embassy said. (AFP)

Romania will take Ukraine to the International Court of Justice to resolve a dispute over areas of the Black Sea potentially rich in oil and gas, a government official said yesterday. The case involves how the two countries should share out fishing and exploration rights in the northern part of the sea which borders Ukraine’s and Romania’s own waters. A 1997 treaty stipulated they would negotiate an agreement within two years, but Bucharest says Kiev is being inflexible and dragging its feet in discussions. (Reuters)