THE HAGUE - Slobodan Milosevic wanted to reduce the number of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to ensure that the province would never be granted autonomy, a Serbian politician said in the former Yugoslav president’s war crimes trial yesterday. People close to Milosevic made it clear that “the Serbian authorities should first of all, quite simply, reduce the numbers of Albanians to realistic numbers and to settle accounts with terrorism,” Ratomir Tanic, the first of the so-called political “insiders” to testify against Milosevic, told the court. Asked by prosecutor Geoffrey Nice how this was to be achieved, Tanic said: “Well, nothing was said. But there... is only one way to do that, and that is through ethnic cleansing.” (AP)

DIYARBAKIR - The Turkish army has launched an air-backed operation in the mountainous east of the country to destroy hideouts belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), local authorities said yesterday. The governor’s office in Tunceli province said in a statement the operation had targeted the rugged region of Alibogazi near Cemisgezek, a town some 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of the province’s main city, also called Tunceli. The operation was launched after captured PKK militants testified that there were “rebel hideouts and caves used to store weapons and food” in Alibogazi, which had been used by the organization as a base until last year, the statement said. (AFP)

A donors conference organized to raise money for the reconstruction of Srebrenica earned $5.2 million in pledges, Bosnia’s president said yesterday. This program “can be the sign of a beginning of an effort to allow the survivors and their children to have some kind of a future in that region,” President Beriz Belkic said after returning from the UN-organized conference in New York. (AP)

Reflecting growing refugee returns and lessened tensions, more than 20,000 Bosnians have come home this year to areas where they are part of an ethnic minority, a UN agency said yesterday. “Since January 2002, the UNHCR is witnessing a steady increase in returns of over 35 percent each month,” said Aida Feraget, the Sarajevo spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (AP)

NATO foreign ministers yesterday accepted Croatia’s request to become the 10th candidate on the waiting list for membership. (AP)