LJUBLJANA (AFP) – The future of Bosnia, currently made up of two highly autonomous halves, poses a “more serious” threat to stability in the Balkans than Kosovo does, the EU’s current president, Janez Jansa, said yesterday. “Bosnia-Herzegovina is a more serious problem for the stability of the western Balkans,” Jansa, the prime minister of Slovenia, told foreign journalists here. “For Kosovo, it’s clear what will happen, it’s more a question of how to do it,” said Jansa. “For Bosnia, the question is: ‘Are the Dayton agreements working?’ First we have to see if the Dayton agreement works,” Jansa said, referring to a November 21, 1995 deal which ended the war and led to the creation of the two autonomous halves.

ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s main Kurdish party yesterday asked the Constitutional Court for additional time to prepare its defense arguments in a case against it for alleged links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatist rebels, a party spokesman said. “We have asked the court for an additional 30 days. If the court does not grant our request, then we will have to submit our defense in writing on Thursday,” Kemal Avci, spokesman for the Democratic Society Party (DTP), told (AFP).

Kurdish militants acting on their own initiative may have staged a deadly bomb attack in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on January 3 that killed five people, and wounded 68, the separatist Kurdish rebel group was quoted yesterday as saying. No one claimed responsibility, but Turkish officials quickly blamed separatist Kurdish rebels. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said a number of its militants, acting on their own, may have been behind the attack and said the group was investigating, the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency said on its website. (AP)