BELGRADE (Reuters) - NATO may let Serbia join its Partnership for Peace (PfP) club if Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica goes on television to tell the country he must arrest war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, Serb officials said. The Vecernje Novosti newspaper yesterday quoted Serbia’s ambassador to NATO, Branislav Milinkovic, as saying he got the message at NATO headquarters in Brussels from Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Monday. In Brussels, a NATO official declined to confirm the report.

DIYARBAKIR (AFP) - The death toll from the floods that have wreaked havoc in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast over the past two weeks reached 46 as three more bodies were recovered yesterday, officials said. The victims - a 15-year-old-girl and two physically handicapped siblings, aged 30 and 27 - were from Semdinli town, in the province of Hakkari, on the borders with Iran and Iraq. They had been missing since Sunday when heavy rains hit the area.

Turkey’s Parliament is to vote on a government-proposed amendment that would allow former prime minister Bulent Ecevit, who died Sunday, burial at a state cemetery alongside presidents and the republic’s founders, the prime minister said yesterday. The existing law allows presidents to be buried at the state cemetery in the capital Ankara, but not prime ministers. (AP)

Bulgarian customs officials incinerated yesterday nearly 900 kilograms (one ton) of illegal drugs seized at Bulgarian border checkpoints in recent years, the country’s Customs Agency said in a statement. The drugs, including nearly 200 kilos of heroin and 161 kilos of amphetamines, were estimated to have a value of some 19 million euros on the black market. (AFP)

Britain’s minister for Europe met yesterday with Bosnian political leaders to discuss the reform needed before the country can be considered for EU or NATO membership. Geoff Hoon, making a three-day trip through the Balkans, urged Bosnia to push ahead with reform. “The message that I bring to the people here and the politicians is to focus on the EU and NATO membership,” Hoon told reporters after the meetings. (AFP)