PRISTINA (Reuters) – Western powers have drafted a new UN resolution on Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province calling for another 120 days of talks between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, a Kosovo newspaper reported on Saturday. Citing a Western diplomat, the daily Zeri said the draft text would be forwarded to Russia today and could be formally circulated at the UN mid-week. The revised text invites Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians to hold fresh talks, on top of 13 months of dialogue that ended in stalemate in March, Zeri reports. If they again fail to agree, a blueprint drafted by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari would automatically take effect.

ROME (AFP) – A verdict in the appeals trial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death in Libya’s high-profile AIDS case will be handed down on Wednesday, Libyan leader Muammar Khadhafy’s son said in an interview published here. He also appeared to suggest that the death penalty would be upheld, but that the sentences could be commuted if a compensation package is worked out between the Bulgarian government and the European Union. “The Supreme Court will pronounce the sentence Wednesday and immediately after the verdict, we will begin to work...on a package (of measures) with a view to a solution,” Saif Al-Islam told the Corriere della Sera.

A land mine believed to be planted by Kurdish rebels killed a Turkish soldier on Saturday, authorities said. The soldier stepped on the mine as he was returning from an operation on Kupeli Mountain in the southeastern province of Sirnak, a local official said. Separately, another soldier was injured Saturday as he stepped on a mine allegedly planted by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, state run Anatolia news agency reported. (AP)

Heavy rains lashed Romania, sparking flash floods which led to the drowning of two teenage girls, the Mediafax news agency reported on Saturday. The girls, both aged 13, were washed away by the swollen Buzau River which had breached its banks in the country’s east. The incessant showers and accompanying lightning felled many trees and inundated several homes in the Carpathian Mountains, a top tourist draw. (AFP)

Up to 10,000 people attended the funeral on Saturday of 80 civilian victims of wartime Serb ethnic cleansing in the northeast Bosnian city of Brcko. The bodies were among the 277 found last year in a mass grave near Brcko. They were Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats killed in 1992, at the beginning of the war. Forensic experts said skulls showed that many of the people were executed by shots to the head, some two or three times. (AP)