BRUSSELS (AP) - The European Union demanded answers from Romania yesterday over its ongoing practice of allowing children to be exported for adoption, something the EU has asked the Bucharest government to stop doing if it wants to join the Union in 2007. EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen sent a letter to Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase reiterating his concerns about Romania’s flouting of an EU moratorium on out-of-country adoptions. “Our position is that the moratorium should continue,” EU spokesman Diego Ojeda said. “Verheugen has asked for a number of clarifications on the matter.” If Romania continues with the adoption policy, its bid to join the EU in 2007 faces “serious consequences,” said Ojeda. Last month, Romania sent 105 children for adoption to Italy.

BERLIN (AFP) - Communist East Germany’s secret police recruited informers from West Berlin’s immigrant community to keep tabs on suspect citizens, German media reported yesterday citing a new report. One aim was to inform on, and nip in the bud, any hopes East German women had of escaping dreary life under the Stalinist state and marrying one of the thousands of foreigners, many of them Turkish, who crossed into East Berlin every day. But the other was to inform on other foreigners already living in the East and who authorities feared might be influenced by Islamic or anti-socialist thoughts from their homeland. The report was compiled by Georg Herbstritt, a researcher at the national archive in Berlin of the East German secret police’s vast records, known in its shortened form as the Stasi.

The Bulgarian Parliament yesterday approved financial compensation for elderly citizens who were persecuted by the country’s former communist regime for their political views. Pensioners or people approaching retirement who were sent to prison or forced labor camps between 1944 and 1989 will be eligible for compensation, according to the measure adopted. The vice president of the parliamentary committee for human rights, Ahmed Ussein, said about 3,500 victims of political persecution by the communists are still alive in Bulgaria. (AFP)

Former Bosnian-Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik yesterday told the UN court that he was innocent of charges of genocide and other war crimes in connection with the brutal campaign of Serb ethnic cleansing against Muslims and Croats during the Bosnian war. “I am not guilty... The indictment is probably addressed to the wrong person,” Krajisnik told the judges at the UN tribunal in a short statement. (AFP)

A NATO-led operation aimed at capturing Bosnia’s top war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic last month missed him by just two hours, the chief UN prosecutor said late Tuesday. Karadzic, the Bosnian-Serb wartime leader who has been on the run for more than seven years, “was there for several hours, but SFOR (the NATO-led force) arrived two hours too late,” Carla Del Ponte told Bosnian television. Troops from SFOR, or the Stabilization Force, stormed Karadzic’s wartime residence on January 13 in the city of Pale, in the Serbian part of the divided Balkan republic. (AFP)

Romania posted a record trade deficit for 2003, overshooting the government’s target by a wide margin and inciting the central bank to impose measures aimed at curbing consumer credit. The deficit soared to 5.59 billion euros ($7 billion), far above a 4.6-billion-euro target, and a 40 percent leap from the 2002 deficit of 3.98 billion. (AFP)