BUCHAREST (AFP) - The environmental organization Greenpeace yesterday accused the Romanian government of failing to control genetically modified food, including transgenic soybeans and maize. Greenpeace cited “the massive illegal cultivation in the country, the black market in seed and the contamination in factories” among the signs that GM food is “escaping the control of authorities” in Romania. Romania is the only European country to grow transgenic soybeans and Bucharest announced last March that it would ban the crop starting in January 2007, the date the country is set to join the European Union.

SARAJEVO (AFP) - Bosnian forensic experts said yesterday they had discovered a large mass grave feared to contain dozens of victims killed at the start of the country’s 1992-1995 war. “We are currently at a 2-meter depth and some 15 bodies appeared on the surface” at the site near the northern town of Brcko, Murat Hurtic of Bosnia’s Missing Persons Commission said. The work at the grave, measuring 13 by 4 meters (43 by 13 feet), is to continue over the next few weeks, Hurtic said. The grave, located just outside Brcko, was found after experts received a tip-off.

Turkey’s Ahmet Necdet Sezer President yesterday approved a legal amendment that would allow former prime minister Bulent Ecevit, who died Sunday, to be buried at a state cemetery alongside presidents and the republic’s founders, the Anatolia news agency reported. A state funeral was planned for tomorrow, according to the wishes of Ecevit’s wife, Rahsan, so that workers across Turkey would be able to attend. (AP)

Hundreds of students in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) protested yesterday against the European Union’s strict visa regime, demanding it be abolished. The students set up a mock border crossing on a main Skopje street in front of the local office of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, asking passers-by to show a visa. “The Berlin Wall fell down, but for us it still exists,” law student Ilija Curev told AFP, explaining that the protest was symbolically organized on the anniversary of the wall’s fall. (AFP)

The United Nations court trying war crimes committed during the Balkan conflicts said yesterday the trial of Serbian ultra-nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj will start on November 27, issuing warnings about the defendant’s disruptive behavior. Seselj will be allowed to mount his own defense but the judges have assigned two lawyers “in reserve” to assist him and replace him if he disrupts the trial’s procedures, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said. (AFP)