BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Romania has a fair chance of concluding European Union membership talks before a summit of EU leaders on Dec. 16-17, European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said yesterday. “I believe that we have a fair chance of closing negotiations between Romania and the EU before the summit, depending on the discussion in Coreper (EU ambassadors),” Rehn told reporters after a meeting with Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana.

SOFIA (AFP) - An eventual permanent deployment of US troops to Bulgaria would involve 2-3,000 people stationed in one or two bases, Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov told AFP yesterday. He was giving the first details about a project that would be part of an historic shift of US forces in Europe from a Cold War posture to a deployment better suited to the current age of terrorism and conflicts in the Middle East. The US Embassy in Sofia refused to comment.

Al Qaeda-linked militant group Ansar Al-Sunna threatened in an Internet video shown yesterday that it would soon kill a Turkish hostage it said was working for a company under contract to US forces in Iraq. “The entrepreneur Fattah Narjess, who came into Iraqi territory across the border (from Turkey)... aided by Massoud Barzani’s clique, will be executed by the army of Ansar Al-Sunna,” it said in a statement on an Islamist website accompanying the video. Barzani is one of the main Kurdish leaders in Iraq and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. (AFP)

The foreign minister of Serbia-Montenegro warned yesterday that all doors to Euro-Atlantic integration are closed for the country because of its reluctance to hand over suspects wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal. Vuk Draskovic told the Serbia-Montenegro Parliament that if Belgrade moved to arrest more than a dozen war crimes fugitives sought by the court in The Hague, Netherlands, it could swiftly establish closer ties with NATO and the EU — the country’s proclaimed goal. “All doors are closed at the moment because of (lack of) cooperation with the Hague” tribunal, Draskovic said. (AP)

Former Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who has been the UN war crimes tribunal’s top fugitive for nearly a decade, will not surrender, his brother said yesterday. “I know how he thinks and there is no one in the world who could talk him into surrendering,” the fugitive’s brother, Luka Karadzic, told AP. Luka Karadzic insisted he had no knowledge of his brother’s whereabouts, but said “information that reaches me... suggests he (Radovan) is fine.” (AP)