BRUSSELS (AP) – A European Union official yesterday rejected the idea of dividing Serbia’s Kosovo province along ethnic lines as part of a diplomatic compromise on the future status of the region. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the 27-nation bloc “sticks to the guiding principles” of the Contact Group of international mediators, which comprises the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia. “These do not include partition,” Rehn told reporters after talks with Serb Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic. He said, however, the EU would back almost any deal reached between Belgrade and Pristina to resolve the crisis.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte is to visit Belgrade later this month to urge greater cooperation from Serbia, which had “slowed down” in recent weeks, her spokesman said yesterday. Del Ponte, 60, who is to step down at the end of this year, has so far failed to secure the arrests of top Balkan war crimes suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, indicted 12 years ago but still on the run. “The cooperation with Belgrade started again but after three months and a good start, it is slowing down,” Del Ponte’s spokeswoman Olga Kavran said.

Bulgaria’s world ice dancing champion Maxim Staviski has been charged in connection with a car crash that left one man dead and a woman in a coma, prosecutors said yesterday. If convicted, he faces three to 10 years in prison for the charge of causing a serious traffic accident with grave consequences, prosecutors said. Staviski’s sport utility vehicle collided on August 5 with a car traveling in the opposite lane, killing a 23-year-old male and seriously injuring the man’s 18-year-old female companion, who remained in a deep coma a month after the accident. A police blood test showed that Staviski’s blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. Supervising prosecutor Ivan Stanev said Staviski was released after paying bail of 2,000 leva (around 1,000 euros). The trial date has not yet been set. Staviski and Albena Denkova captured their second consecutive ice dancing title at the World Figure Skating Championships in March. (AP)

An earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale shook an area near Albania’s central coast yesterday, causing no casualties or damage, authorities said. The tremor, which struck shortly after 7 a.m. (local time), jolted the region of Maminas, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Tirana and close to the coastal resort town of Durres, said the national seismological center. (AFP)