SOFIA (AP) – Bulgaria’s foreign minister expressed concern yesterday that his country will remain outside the zone of protection of the proposed US anti-missile system. Ivailo Kalfin said that the so-called third part of the anti-missile system does not include Bulgaria and it is “sandwiched between the anti-missile shield and the increasing tensions in Russia,” which is vehemently opposed to the missile shield. “Our wish is not to find ourselves in a zone of unequal security,” Kalfin told reporters ahead of this weekend’s visit by US President George W. Bush.

BRUSSELS (AP) – NATO yesterday praised Croatia’s efforts to prepare for membership of the alliance. “There was a clear sense from everyone around the table that Croatia has made great progress,” said alliance spokesman James Appathurai after Croatia’s Prime Minister Ivo Sanader met with envoys from the 26 NATO members. Croatia hopes a NATO summit next April in Bucharest, Romania, will approve its membership bid and start an entry process expected to last up to two years. NATO allies welcomed recent opinion polls, which showed growing support for membership among a previously skeptical Croatian public.

A convicted war criminal in Bosnia who escaped from custody 12 days ago holds Serbian citizenship and is most likely hiding in Serbia or Montenegro, police said yesterday. “Bosnian authorities should request Serbia to strip Radovan Stankovic of his citizenship,” said Dragan Lukac, deputy head of the State Investigation and Protection Agency. “He clearly obtained it illegally in 2004 while in detention” at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Lukac told journalists in Sarajevo, adding that Stankovic was “likely to be hiding in Serbia or Montenegro.” (AFP)

Croatia has arrested six former Serb soldiers for torturing prisoners of war in the eastern town of Vukovar which saw some of the worst fighting in the country’s independence war, police said yesterday. “The six are suspected of war crimes against Croatian soldiers and civilians” committed in November 1991 after Vukovar was captured by Serb rebels, said a police statement. (AFP)