BELGRADE (AP) – Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica lashed out yesterday at the UN envoy mediating the talks on the future of Kosovo, accusing him of failing to condemn “terrorist attacks” against minority Serbs in the breakaway province. “The Serbian government is demanding to know why... Martti Ahtisaari has not yet condemned the terrorism by (ethnic) Albanian separatists in Kosovo,” Kostunica said in a statement to the media. The statement followed an incident Friday in which unknown suspects blew up railway tracks in Kosovo on a route used by minority Serbs. Belgrade promptly attributed the blast to ethnic Albanian separatists.

ANKARA (AFP) –The separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) could call off a two-month-old unilateral ceasefire with Turkey if Ankara continues to crack down on the rebels and mistreat its Kurdish community, a senior rebel commander said yesterday. “Everyone should know that we will reconsider our decision (for a ceasefire)” if the Turkish government does not cease its attacks against PKK rebels, improve the treatment of the Kurdish community and pave the way for dialogue, Cemil Bayik was quoted by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency as saying.

President Fatmir Sejdiu was elected leader of Kosovo’s largest political party Saturday, replacing the province’s late iconic pacifist leader, Ibrahim Rugova. Sejdiu is only the second head of the League of Democratic Kosovo, in 17 years. Party members at a congress in Pristina chose him as leader over former speaker Nexhat Daci. (AP)

A speech made more than a decade ago by Stipe Mesic – now Croatia’s president – in which he apparently glorified Croatia’s World War II pro-Nazi state shocked many across the country yesterday. In an audio recording posted on the Index.hr Web portal on Saturday, a voice that sounds like Mesic’s said Croats won twice during the war: when they established the pro-Nazi puppet state in 1941, and when their anti-fascists crushed the Nazis in 1945. The portal said Mesic made the speech in the early 1990s when he was in late President Franjo Tudjman’s nationalist party. (AP)