BELGRADE (AP) - Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica yesterday invited Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian government leader for direct talks later this month, officials in Belgrade said. Amid many unresolved issues between Serbia and its breakaway Kosovo province, which is dominated by independence-seeking ethnic Albanians, the Serbian authorities are “determined that, through patient dialogue and through compromises, solutions will be found,” said Kostunica’s spokesman, Srdjan Djuric, as he announced the invitation to Bajram Kosumi, the head of Kosovo’s government. There was no immediate reaction from Kosumi’s office.

OFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Bulgaria will host US military forces in three bases, Bulgaria’s state news agency reported on Saturday. “It still remains to be determined which bases are to be chosen, but so far we know that there will be three of them,” Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov was quoted as saying by the state news agency, BTA. Senior military officials had said earlier that a US team was expected to arrive in Bulgaria next week to discuss the bases in detail. US officials have said they could use Bulgarian sites to deploy troops on rotational training tours as part of a broader US strategy of shifting troops based in Europe further east.

Reforming Bosnia’s divided police force would wipe out Serb autonomy and effectively annul the peace accord that ended the Bosnian war in 1995, a Bosnian-Serb leader warned in comments published yesterday. “The situation is dramatic; it could result in a huge explosion,” said the Bosnian-Serb president, Dragan Cavic, in an interview with Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti. The consolidation of the police — the last major divided institution in Bosnia — has been presented as a condition for Bosnia’s joining the European Union one day. Covic protested that “it is an absurd situation that we have to chose between European integration and survival of our state.” (AP)

Two moderate earthquakes shook a Mediterranean resort and a town in central Turkey yesterday, a seismology center said, but there were no reports of any damage or injuries. The first, an undersea earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8 on the Richter scale, shook the resort town of Alanya at 2.46 a.m. Sunday morning, the Istanbul-based Kandilli observatory said. It was centered in the Mediterranean Sea, some 100 kilometers from the shore. The second earthquake, measuring 4.5, hit at 1.54 p.m. and was centered in the town of Cay, in Afyon province. Afyon is some 250 kilometers southwest of Ankara. (AP)