SARAJEVO (AP) - An organization using DNA to identify persons who went missing during the wars in the former Yugoslavia said yesterday it had started analyzing blood samples from family members of the missing in Croatia. In a two-week campaign that covered 18 cities across Croatia in November, teams from the International Commission on Missing Persons collected 754 new blood samples, the commission said in a statement. Those blood samples are being analyzed for DNA profiles, which will be compared to DNA profiles taken from human remains found in grave sites across the former Yugoslavia. “We had an excellent response to the blood collection campaign,” said Adnan Rizvic, deputy director of forensic sciences at the organization.

SARAJEVO (AP) - A human rights group said yesterday that an offer by the Bosnian-Serb government to pay special welfare benefits to war crimes suspects who surrender to the UN war crimes tribunal is immoral. The government announced this week that fugitives who turn themselves in by Dec. 31 would qualify for monthly payments while they are on trial or serving prison terms, as will their families. Family members would also get two free trips a year to The Hague, Netherlands, where the court is based. “It is absolutely scandalous and immoral that Serb authorities are using taxpayers’ money to compensate for their incompetence and inability to arrest war crimes suspects,” said Branko Todorovic of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, a Vienna-based rights watchdog.

Albania invited outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell to Tirana to attend a meeting Albania, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will hold in May next year to mark their efforts to join NATO, the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. (AP)

Turkish security forces killed two militants from an extreme left-wing underground group in a clash in the eastern province of Tunceli, the local governor’s office said in a statement yesterday. The militants, killed in a rural area late Thursday, were believed to be behind an armed attack in 2001 on the convoy of a top regional commander of the paramilitary gendarmerie forces, the statement said. (AFP)

US forces released a Croat truckdriver detained for over two months on suspicion he illegally filmed American military bases and training exercises in Iraq, a Croatian official said yesterday. “Damir Mikulic is on his way home,” said Vinko Ljubicic, a senior Foreign Ministry official, in a statement. (AP)