BELGRADE (AFP) – Despite a continuing dispute with neighboring Croatia, Serbia this week joins the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), a move seen as a springboard for membership in the European Union, the state-controlled Tanjug news agency said yesterday. Serbia’s outgoing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica will sign the accord tomorrow at CEFTA’s summit in Bucharest, the agency said, adding that Belgrade would continue negotiations with Zagreb aimed at solving disagreement over tobacco taxes by mid-2007.

TIRANA (AFP) – Albania asked Greece yesterday to dispatch firefighters to help extinguish a blaze from three out of five huge fuel storage tanks containing more than 10 million liters of petrol in the northwestern port of Shenjin, officials said. Local authorities evacuated residents nearby and police sealed off the area as the fire raged. The government had asked Greece for help in deploying more firefighters, Interior Minister Sokol Olldashi said. The fire spread after a fuel reservoir exploded for unknown reasons in the port of Shenjin some 60 kilometers (36 miles) north of Tirana, causing a leakage of 8 million liters of petrol. At least four firefighters were injured.

Turkish officers yesterday detained 254 Somalis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Yemenites and Turks planning to emigrate illegally to Europe. The would-be migrants were found clustered in a seaside hotel restaurant in the southern resort town of Alanya, where they had been confined for three days, said local government official Hulusi Dogan, quoted by the Anatolia press agency. The group, which was bound for Germany via Italy by sea, were placed in a local sports center and given medical care pending judicial action. Eleven people, including the manager of the hotel, have been detained. (AFP)

Albanian Foreign Minister Besnik Mustafaj appealed on Saturday to Kosovo Albanians to preserve the multiethnic society in the UN-run province ahead of a settlement expected early next year. “The Albanian government, the Albanian parliament and the Albanian institutions don’t support any tendency of any individual that excludes the minorities in the (Kosovo) society,” Mustafaj said during a visit to Kosovo. “On the contrary, an independent and sovereign Kosovo makes sense only as the state of its all citizens.” (AFP)