PRISTINA (Reuters) - NATO yesterday denied reports it would cut back its 17,100 peacekeepers in Kosovo as the disputed UN protectorate nears talks on its future. A spokesman for the NATO-led peace force in Kosovo, KFOR, said comments made on Tuesday by the alliance’s top soldier, US General James Jones, had been “misunderstood.” The Supreme Allied Commander Europe “did not speak about troop reductions, but about reorganization and streamlining,” French Major Leroy Guillaume told a news conference in Pristina.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey has formally proposed to Armenia the creation of a joint commission to study allegations of genocide against the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as a first step toward normalizing relations, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told Parliament during a special session on a damaging Armenian campaign for the recognition of the controversial World War I massacres as genocide yesterday. “I repeat this appeal once again... Turkey is ready to face its history, Turkey has no problem with its history,” Gul said.

The Romanian government is in contact with the kidnappers of three Romanian journalists in Iraq, who are alive and not being ill-treated, President Traian Basescu said yesterday. “I do not know for how long we will be able to stay in touch (with the kidnappers) but it is significant that we had good enough information to be able to contact them,” Basescu said. Basescu said that Romanian troops in Iraq, who number some 800, “will finish their mission” within the US-led coalition. (AFP)

United Nations police in Kosovo have charged an ethnic Albanian man with the murder of 12 Serbs in a 2001 bus bombing, one of the worst acts of violence in the province since the 1998-99 war. Florim Ejupi, who is in police custody, is the first person charged with planting the remote-controlled bomb which blew apart a busload of Serbs after it crossed the boundary from Serbia to UN-run Kosovo under NATO escort. (Reuters)

Delay]Former Bosnian-Serb officer Milorad Trbic yesterday asked the United Nations court in The Hague for a 30-day delay before entering a plea to the charges of war crimes against him related to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. (AFP)

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun will arrive in Turkey today for a three-day visit, the first here by a South Korean head of state, the Turkish presidency’s press office said. (AFP)