BRUSSELS (AFP) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday refused to rule out using Moscow’s right of veto at the UN Security Council to block any move to grant independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo. “There can only be a negotiated solution. The Security Council cannot impose a solution on any of the parties,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference. US Undersecretary of State for political affairs Nicholas Burns expressed surprise at the reports, saying: “We never heard anything like this before. Maybe he has been misquoted. I must assume he was misquoted.”

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – One man was shot dead and nearly 100 people were injured in clashes in eastern Turkey between security forces and an armed mob trying to lynch a confessed child rapist, authorities said yesterday. The 3,000-strong crowd fought running battles with security forces in the town of Sirnak over a 12-hour period on Monday outside the hospital where the accused was being treated for head injuries inflicted by fellow inmates in his jail cell. Police, backed by troops and paramilitary units, used tear gas and armored personnel carriers to disperse the crowd. The dead man was a hospital employee, shot by one of the mob as they tried to storm the hospital.

An international team of doctors was in The Hague yesterday to examine a Serb ultra-nationalist in a prison hospital where he is on a hunger strike that has already forced the suspension of his UN war crimes trial. Doctors will likely ask the tribunal to allow Vojislav Seselj to be sent to Serbia for treatment, said Dr Patrick Barriot, a French physician who was to visit him along with Serbian and Russian colleagues. “Of course, we will propose it,” Barriot told reporters before meeting Seselj. (AP)

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that he will visit Damascus today to discuss the situation in Iraq and Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Erdogan told his party’s parliamentary group that he would meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other officials. (AFP)