ZAGREB (AFP) - EU enlargement chief Olli Rehn will visit Croatia this weekend, just days after the start of the country’s long-delayed membership talks with the bloc, the European Commission said yesterday. Rehn, who will arrive for a two-day visit tomorrow, will meet with Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, President Stipe Mesic and other officials, said a statement from the EU executive body.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - A former Bosnian Croat leader was jailed in absentia for 10 years yesterday after being found guilty of abuse of office and embezzlement of 100 million euros. Bosnia’s state court issued a warrant for the arrest of Ante Jelavic after he failed to show up for the sentencing following an 18-month trial. He was accused of using government funds to buy shares in Croat-run Hercegovacka bank and in an insurance firm in the town of Mostar when he was defense minister of Bosnia’s Muslim Croat Federation in the late 1990s. He was head of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party and a member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency.

Kosovo and Serbian authorities have solved another 216 cases of people who went missing during the 1998-1999 war in the province, the Red Cross said yesterday. “We have managed to clarify the fate of 216 persons” whose remains were handed over to their families, said Francois Stamm, representative the International Committee of the Red Cross. Stamm told reporters 2,557 people, most of them ethnic Albanians, were still listed as missing from the conflict. “Of this number, the fate of 440 people is known to the families but the bodies have not been found,” Stamm said. (AFP)

Romania has deported five students accused of having ties to al-Qaida, a spokesman for the country’s intelligence service said yesterday, adding that their alleged cell was trying to recruit and “brainwash” members of the country’s Muslim community. Marius Bercaru said the five were placed under surveillance in the capital and the northeast city of Iasi and later deported and banned from returning for the next 15 years. He declined to say where they were sent, only saying the deportations took place this year. (AP)