BUCHAREST (AP) - Parliament yesterday gave final approval to a law that would require foreign-language signs and advertisements to be also translated into Romanian, despite criticism that the legislation was a throwback to communist times. The Chamber of Deputies approved the law by a 222-36 vote margin. The law was passed earlier by the Senate and takes effect once signed by President Ion Iliescu. Under the legislation, which is designed to protect the Romanian language, any company which fails to translate foreign names into Romanian would face a fine of up to 50 million lei (US$1,500). Trademarks are exempted from the law.

BELGRADE (AFP) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica hailed the victory of a Bosnian-Serb nationalist party at weekend elections, saying the Serb Democratic Party was “rewarded” for its “wise policy,” the Beta news agency reported yesterday. “The reasonable and wise policy that the SDS has led has been rewarded at the elections,” Kostunica was quoted by the agency as saying in a TV interview late Monday. He said the SDS “cooperated with the international community, namely with the High Representative in Bosnia,” named to implement the 1995 Bosnia peace accords, Kostunica said.

Justice officials in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) have decided to release a top ethnic Albanian politician who was arrested over the weekend on charges of treason and war crimes, private television A1 reported late Monday. Sadul Duraku, one of the leaders of the Democratic Union of Integration (DUI) party, was arrested Sunday for “treason, attacking the territorial integrity of Macedonia, and war crimes against civilians,” the Interior Ministry said. (AFP)

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he would support Bulgaria’s bid for NATO membership, and said EU membership for the Balkan country as soon as 2007 was something that could be achieved. “I am confident that at the Prague meeting of NATO that an invitation will be extended to Bulgaria, and certainly we in Britain would support that very strongly,” he said after talks with Bulgarian PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg. “I think that not later than 2007, Bulgaria’s membership of the EU is not just something that is possible, but is something that I think can well be achieved,” Blair said. (Reuters)

The German and Italian military sectors will merge into one command in Kosovo as NATO embarks on a restructuring plan aimed at reducing its presence in the Balkans, an official said yesterday. The German-led brigade in charge of the southern part of Kosovo and the Italian brigade in the province’s western part will function under joint headquarters from mid-November, said Lt. Col. Franz-Friedrich Sodenkamp, a spokesman for German peacekeepers with the NATO-led force. (AP)