PRISTINA (AP) – Kosovo’s lawmakers unanimously adopted a constitution yesterday, pledging to build a state with broad provisions for Serb and other minorities. President Fatmir Sejdiu said the document was an important step in Kosovo’s state-building process and signals Kosovo’s commitment to creating a society of equal citizens. Pledges by its leaders to protect the Serb minority have failed to blunt Belgrade’s fierce opposition to the territory’s independence. “The guarantees for the minorities express... the commitment of the majority of citizens and institutions to building an independent and sovereign Kosovo, home to all citizens, regardless of their ethnicity,” Sejdiu told lawmakers. The 120-seat assembly approved the constitution with thunderous applause. “We have the privilege to belong to this generation that is approving the highest legal act of the world’s youngest country,” Sejdiu told the assembly.

BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union warned Turkey yesterday that attempts to ban its Islamic-rooted governing party could damage the country’s ties with the 27-nation bloc it seeks to join. EU chief Jose Manuel Barroso, who begins a three-day visit to Ankara today, said that banning the Justice and Development Party (AKP) would have a “major impact” on Turkey’s ties with the EU. “It’s not normal that the party that was chosen by the majority of the Turkish people is now under this kind of investigation,” Barroso said. Turkey’s Constitutional Court has agreed to hear the chief prosecutor’s case for shutting down the party and banning the prime minister, President Abdullah Gul and 70 others from politics for five years. Barroso said the case “could have a major impact in the way Turkey is seen” by EU nations and its bid to join the bloc. “We are looking for a secular, democratic Turkey,” he said, adding “you cannot impose secularism by force.”

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer sent letters yesterday to Albania and Croatia, formally inviting them to join the world’s biggest military alliance, his spokesman said. “A few minutes ago, the secretary general sent a letter to the foreign ministers of those two countries telling them to send a team for the launch of formal accession talks,” spokesman James Appathurai told reporters. (AFP)

Serbian police are investigating an alleged assassination plot targeting war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, who has angered nationalists by pursuing suspects from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The plan involved Bosnian Serb former security officers, and was uncovered via a man the plotters tried to recruit, prosecution spokesman Bruno Vekaric said yesterday. (Reuters)