PRISTINA - The NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) said yesterday it had detained a former ethnic Albanian guerrilla leader in southern Serbia. Shefket Musliu, commander of the disbanded rebel Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), was captured on Tuesday, a spokesman for the US-led force told AFP. He was being detained at Bondsteel, the largest military base used by US peacekeepers, 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Pristina, Kosovo’s provincial capital. Musliu’s rebels fought Yugoslav forces in southern Serbia’s Presevo valley, seeking greater rights for the region’s ethnic Albanian majority. (AFP)

SKOPJE - The chief UN war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia said yesterday her investigators are probing five cases of atrocities during the civil war in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) last year. Carla Del Ponte, on a one-day visit to FYROM, said the prosecution at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague is investigating cases that include the alleged slaughter of 10 ethnic Albanians in the village of Ljuboten near the capital of Skopje and the kidnapping of several Slav-Macedonians near Tetovo, the stronghold of Albanian rebels who fought for independence. Del Ponte’s visit to FYROM coincided with a report that a NATO peacekeeper had been killed and another seriously injured yesterday when their vehicle struck a land mine near the northwestern city of Tetovo. (AP)

NATO said yesterday it had resumed air-dropping leaflets in southeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, offering a reward for information on the fugitive Bosnian-Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic. NATO-led peacekeepers dropped leaflets over the southeastern villages of Cajnice and Kalinovik, offering informants an increase in aid and job opportunities if they came forward. The leaflet includes a picture of Karadzic and a statement he recently made: “If I thought it was in the best interests of the Serb people, I would surrender to The Hague immediately.” (AFP)

Turkey’s president said yesterday he had advised Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit to stay at home this week to recover from an intestinal infection that had briefly alarmed financial markets. “He looked very well to me. He is resting,” President Ahmet Necdet Sezer told reporters after visiting 76-year-old Ecevit at his home in an Ankara suburb, where he has been recuperating since a weekend visit to hospital. (Reuters)

An Istanbul court yesterday charged Mustafa Yildirim, an ethnic Chechen gunman who briefly held hostages in a luxury Istanbul hotel at the weekend, with public order offenses. There were no charges under Turkey’s strict anti-terrorism laws, which legal experts say demand proof of an organization or conspiracy and cannot be applied to lone actions. (Reuters)

Bulgaria and Croatia banned imports of Polish beef and related products yesterday, only days after the first case of “mad cow” disease was reported in Poland. (AP)