BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia will hold fresh presidential elections on November 16, after two attempts to pick a leader failed last year due to insufficient turnout, Parliament Speaker Natasa Micic announced yesterday. But two key opposition parties said they would not take part, insisting that early parliamentary elections must instead be held to resolve what they see as a growing political crisis three years after Slobodan Milosevic’s ouster. They suggested another failure was likely as a rule under which 50 percent of voters must cast ballots for the presidency poll to be declared valid was still in place.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - A Bosnian Serb convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes saw his prison sentence doubled on appeal yesterday at an international criminal court in The Hague. The appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) raised from seven-and-a-half to 15 years the prison sentence imposed in March 2002 on Milorad Krnojelac. The 63-year-old Bosnian Serb was convicted over persecutions and inhumane acts amounting to a crime against humanity and cruel treatments constituting a war crime.

The NATO-led peacekeeping force said yesterday that it had discovered over 40 tons of illegal weapons and ammunition in less than three weeks hidden at a series of locations in northwestern Bosnia. The Stabilization Force (SFOR) found a large cache of weapons on Tuesday in a cave near the Bosnian-Serb village of Knezice, Brigadier Ben Barry, commander of the regional SFOR brigade, told a news conference. He said the cave contained over 100 boxes of heavy mortar ammunition. (Reuters)

Police and intelligence officers have captured two leftist militants suspected of planning suicide bombings in Istanbul, police said yesterday. Police said the two from the outlawed Marxist group, Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, were captured in Istanbul last Saturday along with an accomplice, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported. It was not clear why police waited several days to report the arrests. (AP)

Four years after their war over Kosovo, Serbia and NATO are cooperating on the Afghanistan peace mission with Serb forces destined for Kabul by the end of the year, a senior Serbian official said on yesterday. He said Serbia was prepared to contribute “several hundred” troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which numbers 5,000. (Reuters)

Romania introduced a new program to teach high school students about the Holocaust yesterday, marking the country’s first effort to educate its youth about its role in the deaths of thousands of Jews during World War II. The manual, which will be given to schools around Romania, was issued three months after the Romanian government said in a statement that there was no Holocaust inside Romania’s borders. (AP)