UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan pressed Serbia and Kosovo on Tuesday to be more flexible in their talks on the fate of Serbia’s breakaway province, to help pave the way toward a compromise. “It is the responsibility of the parties to find common ground and a sustainable solution, acceptable to both sides,” Annan said in his latest progress report to the UN Security Council on the course of the “final status” negotiations. Annan said he was disappointed that little common ground had been identified between the Serbian and Kosovo delegations, leaving “minimal space for negotiation.”

SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgaria’s arms and military equipment exports reached 120 million euros ($152 million) annually in recent years, with imports of some 90 million euros, the Economy Ministry said yesterday. The figures, previously kept secret, will from now on be made public and communicated to the European Union, which Bulgaria hopes to join on January 1, 2007, said Ivelina Bahchevanova of the ministry’s trade department. Along with traditional buyers of Bulgarian weapons in Asia and Africa, Bulgaria has begun shipping arms to the United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union, Bahchevanova said.

The Croatian government and the city of Zagreb will finance the reconstruction of a synagogue that was leveled during World War II, when Croatia was a Nazi puppet state, officials said yesterday. The new synagogue will be built at the site of the old one in downtown Zagreb - currently a car park run by the Jewish community. “We want to correct the historical error,” said Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who met with Croatian Jewish representatives late Tuesday. (AP)

An ethnic Serb teenager attacked a 13-year old Croatian boy with a knife in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar, in an incident police said yesterday was the most serious of its kind in recent years. “A 17-year-old boy, who got on a city bus transporting around a dozen schoolchildren, started to insult them on an ethnic basis, verbally threatening that he would kill them,” police spokesman Miroslav Janic told AFP. The teenager grabbed a 13-year-old boy and put a knife under his throat, Janic said, describing the incident which occurred on Monday. When the teenager pulled the knife downward, he cut the boy’s two fingers and fled the bus. Police identified and briefly detained the perpetrator, who was under the influence of alcohol, and are to press charges against him for threats and violent behavior. (AFP)