PRISTINA (Reuters) – An ethnic Albanian former guerrilla leader in Serbia’s Presevo Valley called yesterday for the region’s unification with Kosovo, raising the stakes in a deepening diplomatic row over the province’s fate. Jonuz Musliu, the former political leader of a guerrilla army that fought Serb forces in 2000-01 in and around Presevo, told a Kosovo newspaper that little had changed to improve the plight of the region’s Albanians since the conflict. He called for the creation of a “national council to begin negotiating with the Serbian government on the unification of the Bujanovac and Presevo municipalities with Kosovo.”

BANJA LUKA (Reuters) – Bosnian-Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik yesterday warned Muslim leaders to abandon anti-Serb rhetoric if they planned to live with Serbs in the same country. The warning came only two weeks after US-hosted talks in Washington failed to find a compromise agreement between Dodik and his Muslim rival, Haris Silajdzic, on key reforms that the EU demands as a prerequisite for closer ties. “We say to Mr Silajdzic and his supporters not to play with fire,” Dodik said in a statement, responding to a renewed challenge by Silajdzic to the legitimacy of the Serb Republic and its right to exist as an autonomous entity.

The death toll from a suicide bombing in a busy central commercial district of Ankara, Turkey, last month rose to eight, including the bomber, when one of the wounded died in the hospital yesterday, the Anatolia news agency reported. The victim had been undergoing treatment since the attack on May 22. (AFP)

Romania’s ruling Liberals yesterday ruled out offering government posts to the powerful opposition Social Democrats (PSD) in exchange for their long-term support in parliament. The government of Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu faces a June 11 no-confidence vote in a damaging feud among the parties that threatens Romania’s chances of gaining quick benefits from membership in the EU, which it joined in January. The PSD has said it will back the centrist minority government in the vote but it has reserved the right nonetheless to bring it down at a later date. “We do not intend to offer anything; we do not negotiate; we are just having informal talks... For the PSD to form a government, the current one must fall,” Tariceanu told reporters. (Reuters)

Italian Foreign Minister Massimo d’Alema will visit Turkey next week to discuss bilateral relations and Ankara’s troubled membership talks with the EU, the Turkish foreign ministry said yesterday. During the June 12-13 visit, d’Alema will meet with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul and other senior officials. Talks will focus on economic, political and cultural ties, plus Ankara’s EU membership talks, the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus and other regional and international issues, the ministry said. (AFP)