MITROVICA (Reuters) - Kosovo’s government and its UN overseers appealed yesterday for funds to rebuild a Roma settlement, in response to growing disquiet at the plight of its former residents. The Roma Mahala in southern Mitrovica was one of the largest and oldest Gypsy communities in the former Yugoslavia, a 1,000-meter stretch of housing on the River Ibar that has divided the town between Serbs and Albanians for six years. It was destroyed after the 1998-99 war in a wave of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians against Serbs and other minorities seen as “collaborators” in years of repressive Serb rule.

ANKARA (AP) - Turkey yesterday criticized a decision by Argentina’s Senate to call the mass killing of Armenians during World War I “genocide.” Argentina’s Senate last month backed a resolution condemning the killings by Ottoman Turkish forces.

Turkish authorities have detained a suspected suicide bomber in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast during a failed attack on a police station, security officials said yesterday. A 26-year-old woman carrying C-4 explosives was apprehended late on Wednesday before she was able to enter a police station in the city of Diyarbakir, the official said. Police said the woman identified herself as a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a guerrilla group that has fought for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey since 1984. (Reuters)

Albania’s governing Socialist Party held its electoral congress yesterday to chose its leadership and approve candidates for July parliamentary elections — the sixth since the 1990 collapse of communism in the tiny Balkan nation. The party was expected to re-elect Prime Minister Fatos Nano as its leader, hoping to win a third consecutive term in the majority. (AP)

A man was killed when he dipped his hands in the waters of a fountain with damaged electrical gear in the Bulgarian capital, a prosecutor said yesterday. Veselin Petrov, 34, was electrocuted Tuesday near the popular fountain in downtown Sofia, city prosecutor Boiko Naidenov said. (AP)

The mother of top Bosnian-Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic died yesterday, hospital officials said. She was 83. Jovanka Karadzic died “after a short illness” in a village close to Niksic, some 50 kilometers northwest of Montenegro’s capital Podgorica. (AP)