SOFIA (AP) - Two kidnapped Bulgarians in Iraq were believed to still be alive yesterday, nearly two days after the expiration of an ultimatum issued by militants threatening to behead them, Foreign Minister Solomon Passy said. However, he said his information was not confirmed. “Our two countrymen are alive,” Passy told journalists. He did not reveal the source of his information, which he said was received around noon (09.00GMT). In a phone call on Saturday to Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, US President George W. Bush received assurances that the Balkan country’s troop commitment in Iraq remains strong despite the threats by the insurgents. A group of Bulgarian diplomats arrived in Baghdad yesterday in an effort to establish contacts on the ground that could facilitate the release of the hostages, Passy said.

BUCHAREST (AFP) - At least 18 people have died in the last three days in Romania and another 15 during the past week in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) as a heat wave brought blistering temperatures to the Balkans. Hospital officials said on Friday that most of the casualties in Romania had died from heart attacks in the street or while working in the fields as temperatures reached 38C (100F). At least 15 people died in FYROM in the heat wave, doctors said. “At least five people die every day as a result of the heat,” Ljupco Pajkovski, a doctor in Skopje’s emergency center, told reporters. “People mostly died of heart attacks, brain seizures or heat stroke,” he added.

NATO-led peacekeepers have released six ethnic Albanians detained after a gunman slightly wounded four Finnish soldiers, an official said yesterday. The peacekeepers sustained shotgun pellet wounds to their arms and legs from a shot fired late on Saturday as they were patrolling near the town of Lipljan, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Pristina. Six people detained at the scene were released after they were questioned, said Capt. Thomas Magnusson, a spokesman for the peacekeepers in Kosovo. The gunman remained at large and the investigation was ongoing. “KFOR is not expecting that this was a planned attack against them,” Magnusson said, using the acronym for the NATO-led force in Kosovo. He did not elaborate beyond saying that the shooting was “possibly related to a local smuggling operation.” (AP)

The UN Security Council extended the mandate of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia for a final six months on Friday, in anticipation of the European Union taking over its mission by the end of 2004. A resolution adopted unanimously by the 15-nation council authorizes the multinational stabilization force under NATO command to continue providing security in the Balkan country through the end of December. The measure also “welcomes the EU’s intention to launch an EU mission to Bosnia” by that time. (Reuters)

Bosnian-Serb wartime leader and top war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic has health problems which could force him to appear before international justice, the commander of NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia said in an interview on Saturday. “There are some indications that Karadzic has certain health problems and that it is something that he should take care of,” US General Virgil Packett said in an interview with the independent Nezavisne Novine daily. (AFP)