MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia on Saturday said a draft resolution endorsing a UN plan to grant Kosovo independence from Serbia, introduced by Western powers in the Security Council, was “unacceptable.” “We will, of course, hold discussions with the document’s authors. But it is obvious that the draft resolution contains clauses that are unacceptable to us,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “A settlement may be achieved – not through... imposed solutions but on the basis of an accord between the Serbs and Albanians of Kosovo,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kaminin said. “We favor steps which encourage negotiations to seek a compromise solution which will be in conformity with international stability,” he said. Russia’s envoy to the UN Vitali Churkin said talks with the US on the issue would only begin when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Moscow tomorrow.

ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s main Kurdish party called on the president on Saturday to veto a controversial bill widely seen as a bid to hinder Kurdish politicians from seeking parliamentary seats in the July 22 elections. “I hope the president will veto this unfair action,” Ahmet Turk, the chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency. The bill, approved by parliament on Thursday, is a move that “blocks the way of democratic politics” and hampers efforts for a peaceful resolution of the two-decade Kurdish conflict in the country, he said. “We want to enter parliament,” he said. “We want all of Turkey’s problems, and primarily the Kurdish question, to be resolved on democratic grounds.” The bill, which needs the approval of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to come into force, amends a constitutional provision relating to independent candidates.

Thousands of Bosnian Muslims attended the burial on Saturday of almost 100 of their ethnic kin killed by Bosnian-Serb paramilitaries at the outbreak of the 1992-95 war. Amid heavy security, they gathered in sweltering heat in a field at the entrance to Bratunac after Serbs, who now make up the town’s overwhelming majority, opposed the burial near a newly renovated mosque in the town center. Dozens of Bosnian-Serb police stood guard as mourners prayed in rows. Family members, relatives, friends and senior Muslim religious and political figures carried 94 coffins draped in green cloth to the final resting places of the victims, whose bodies were found in several mass graves. (Reuters)

Bulgarian customs officers seized 48 kg of heroin estimated to be worth some 4.3 million levs (about 3 million euros) in a truck traveling from Turkey to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), the customs office said yesterday. The drug had been put into 91 packages and hidden in secret compartments in the truck. (Reuters)