BELGRADE (AFP) - Police have solved last month’s murder of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said in a television interview. “Everything about the assassination has been elucidated. Most of perpetrators of the assassination are in prison, most of them have confessed their participation in the killing, including the man suspected to have pulled the trigger,” Mihajlovic told Studio B channel late on Sunday. Zvezdan Jovanovic, deputy commander of the former elite police Unit for Special Operations (JSO), was arrested last month on suspicion of shooting Djindjic. Another 30 JSO members have also been arrested. But the man suspected of masterminding the murder — ex-JSO commander Milorad Lukovic — is still in hiding.

ANKARA (AFP) - The United Nations is to ship “an important part” of supplies bound for Iraq under the oil-for-food program via Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Iskenderun, a senior Turkish official said yesterday. The office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has informed Turkey that its application to serve as a route for the shipments has been accepted, Tuncer Kayalar, foreign trade undersecretary, said in a written statement. “We now expect that an important part of the shipments to Iraq will be made from the Iskenderun port and that a minimum of 250 trucks per day... will transport goods to Iraq in the coming days,” Kayalar said.

The UN war crimes court is to hand down its final ruling today against two Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat convicted of committing atrocities against Serb civilians during the war in Bosnia. Hazim Delic, Esad Lanzo and Zdravko Mucic were found guilty in 2001 of war crimes for their role in running the Celebici detention camp in central Bosnia and the torture, beatings and sexual assaults suffered by Bosnian-Serb inmates. Often referred to as the UN court’s “forgotten trial,” the case has dragged on for six years with several appeals. Today’s ruling on the defendants’ appeals against sentence will be the first time the court has delivered a final decision against Bosnian Muslims since it was set up in 1993. (AFP)

Snowstorms swept through Bulgaria yesterday, causing traffic chaos and blanketing villages in the southern parts of the country. Several people were injured in weather-related traffic accidents in the capital Sofia and in other cities, police said. By noon yesterday, snow was falling all over the country, creating up to a meter-deep snow cover. Temperatures dipped back below freezing after weeks of warm spring weather. (AP)

Albania has sent five soldiers to Kuwait to prepare a peacekeeping operation that will be deployed in Iraq after the war, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. The five left on Sunday for Kuwait to “prepare for the arrival of the Albanian contingent,” the ministry said in a statement. Albania decided last month to send a special army unit of 70 soldiers to Iraq to carry out postwar peacekeeping duties. (AP)