ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has rejected the possibility of a retrial under current conditions in Turkey after Europe's top human rights court ruled his trial unfair, his lawyer said yesterday. His lawyers also said they would suspend visits to Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence for treason in an island prison near Istanbul, as legal conditions made it impossible to defend him properly. «Our client has said he will not accept a retrial... as it would just be a piece of theater in view of existing laws becoming more severe and the statements made by officials,» lawyer Dogan Erbas told reporters.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia will not meet its deadline to complete all trials by 2008 and will have to keep working at least into 2009, the court's president said. In a letter to the UN Security Council, Judge Theodor Meron said the Hague-based tribunal was working at full throttle but would not shut before top fugitives Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and Ante Gotovina had been arrested and tried.

Romania will send 400 extra troops to reinforce NATO's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan during parliamentary elections in September, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. (Reuters)

The prime minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) yesterday urged the EU to keep its doors open to the countries of Southeastern Europe during the crisis over the bloc's proposed constitution. «I believe it is very important for the whole region, the whole Balkans, to send a clear signal that the expansion process... must continue,» FYROM Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski said after meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin. (AP)

Turkish police have seized 45kg (100lb) of heroin and 125,000 ecstasy pills in swoops in a number of cities including the capital Ankara, the state-run Anatolia news agency said yesterday. It said three people had been arrested in Ankara and 17 more were under interrogation in the southern city of Adana. (Reuters)

Romanian railway workers launched a strike yesterday to demand higher wages, bringing hundreds of trains to a halt and stranding thousands of travelers. The railway union is calling for wage raises of 10.7 percent and 20 meal tickets a month. (AP)

Justice ministers from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia - the ex-Yugoslav countries that were at war in the 1990s - yesterday discussed cooperation in prosecuting the perpetrators of atrocities during those wars. The ministers are aiming to find ways to ensure fair and impartial prosecution of war crimes and end impunity for perpetrators, said the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or OSCE, which organized the summit. (AP)