ZAGREB (AFP) - Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan is to step down today following a rift with the second largest partner in his five-party coalition, the government’s public relations office said yesterday. Racan is to submit his resignation at today’s government session and is to address the public at noon (1000 GMT) on national television. Observers expect President Stipe Mesic to reappoint Racan immediately and ask him to form a new government.

BELGRADE (AFP) - Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said yesterday that evidence had been uncovered of plans to murder prominent politicians in a bid to destabilize Serbia’s reformist government. “We have had operative information that after Saint Vitus Day, June 28, some ministers or politicians will be liquidated,” Mihajlovic told reporters. “The only name we have learned as a target is Cedomir Jovanovic,” he said. Jovanovic is the leader of the parliamentary party of the ruling DOS coalition and a senior official in Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic’s Democratic Party. His car was blown up last year in a Belgrade car park.

Turkish political leaders, including ailing Premier Bulent Ecevit, met yesterday to discuss the country’s sagging economy and ease markets worried about the government’s future. The meeting, headed by Ecevit and attended by his coalition partners and the country’s economy and finance ministers, aimed to show the government’s commitment to an International Monetary Fund-backed economic recovery program. (AP)

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) set September 15 as the date for a general election politicians hope will crown the peace process begun after last year’s ethnic conflict. Parliamentary speaker Stojan Andov, naming the date, said yesterday he hoped the election would be fair and democratic and “conclude the crisis and open a new era.” Western organizations in FYROM, especially the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, fear violence could flare during the election and are planning to monitor it closely. (Reuters)

A pro-Islamic party said yesterday that it has applied to the European Court of Human Rights to appeal a ruling that bans its popular leader from running for Parliament. Turkey’s highest court ruled in April that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party, is not eligible to run for elections because of a prior conviction for inciting religious hatred. (AP)

Bosnia’s education system is in crisis, promoting segregation instead of building skills that could help stabilize the country, the top international envoy to Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, said yesterday. “Education is in crisis. Instead of facilitating a unified Bosnian identity, it is widely used as an ideological and political tool to reinforce ethnic bias, intolerance, segregation and discrimination,” he added. (AFP)

A court yesterday ruled that 39 members of Turkey’s only pro-Kurdish political party who were charged with supporting Kurdish rebels could benefit from an amnesty, their lawyer said. The decision stopped legal proceedings against the 39 members of the People’s Democracy Party, or HADEP. (AP)