BELGRADE (AP) - A government panel decided yesterday to allow four former officials to divulge classified information when they appear before the UN war crimes court. Seeking to improve the country’s faltering cooperation with the Netherlands-based court, the panel said in a statement it had “positively responded to four requests from the tribunal concerning four witnesses.” The former officials were not named, but the National Council for Cooperation said it “freed them from the obligation to keep state and military secrets” when they appear at the Hague court.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Bulgaria, which aims to join the European Union in 2007, wants to sign an accession treaty with the bloc as early as possible next year, Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg said yesterday. “I hope (to sign the treaty) next year and as early as possible — as early as the EU would consider it fit,” Saxe-Coburg told reporters during a visit to Sweden. The Balkan state and its northern neighbor Romania missed out on the bloc’s landmark enlargement into ex-communist Europe in May, mainly due to the wide gap between their poorer economies and those of the EU’s 10 newcomers.

Romanian rights groups yesterday accused European Union Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen of meddling in Romania’s election campaign, demanding a declaration that he does not back the ruling party. Verheugen had said Romania could and should complete EU entry talks before the end of November, prompting many to view the comment as a confidence vote for the ruling ex-communist PSD party’s policies ahead of Nov. 28 elections. But Verheugen’s spokesman denied the allegations, saying the EU was trying to meet its mandate to conclude entry negotiations by year-end. (Reuters)

Interior ministers from Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) said yesterday that they would launch joint police operations to crack down on drug smugglers passing through their countries on their way to Western Europe. Albanian Minister of Public Order Igli Toska and visiting FYROM Interior Minister Siljan Avramovski also promised to share intelligence on organized crime and tighten border security. “It is only the joint and team work that could give results in fighting all kinds of crimes,” Avramovski told a news conference. (AP)

Insurgents killed a Turkish driver in a rocket attack on his truck in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji, police said yesterday. They said gunmen attacked the fuel tanker with rockets, knocking it onto its side and setting it ablaze. It was not immediately clear when the incident took place. The dead driver, who was carrying a Turkish passport and papers, was taken to a hospital in nearby Tikrit. (Reuters)