WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States announced Thursday a freeze on the financial assets of three Bosnian charities accused of funneling money to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The Treasury Department said it had cracked down on three Sarajevo-based charities: Al Furqan, Taibah International, and Al-Haramain and Al Masjed Al-Aqsa Charity Foundation. The charities’ assets were blocked and all financial dealings with them banned.

PRISTINA (Reuters) - The United Nations yesterday rejected an Amnesty International report accusing NATO troops and UN police in Kosovo of fueling sex trafficking, calling it “highly unbalanced.” The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) said the report by the human rights group drew heavily on conditions in the province between 1999 and 2001 and did not reflect the current situation. “Outdated information from that period is extrapolated on and presented as current, giving the impression that problems, which existed in 2001, remain at the same level in 2004,” the UN said in a statement.

“The true facts tell a different story,” it added.

The EU warned Serbia-Montenegro yesterday that it must push ahead with reforms or face isolation as its neighbors move toward EU membership. “Serbia and Montenegro has to decide what it wants,” said EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten ahead of next week’s visit to the Balkan nation. “Does it want a closer relationship with Europe, and therefore to make the reforms that are essential to reach that goal, or does it want to take the risk of wasting more time, and slipping behind its neighbors?” Patten opens his two-day visit on Monday and will also travel to the UN-administered province of Kosovo. (AP)

Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana said yesterday his government favors keeping tight restrictions on international adoptions in line with demands from the European Union. “As long as the European Union doesn’t give a clear signal that it wants to relax the existing legislation, the law will continue to go to Parliament the way it was formulated,” said Geoana. (AP)

NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia yesterday posted full-page newspaper advertisements warning war crimes suspects that the noose was tightening around them. The ad published in the Bosnian-Serb daily Glas Srpske read, “The people have begun to speak,” with a picture of a civilian whispering to a soldier of the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR). “We are closer than you think,” the caption below said. (AFP)