BELGRADE (Reuters) - In a test of its ability to face up to the past, Serbia is to probe allegations of the gruesome torture and killing of Muslims by Serb units in a village theater in Bosnia at the start of the 1992-95 war. “Sickening crimes and murders were committed in the theater where 174 Muslim men were held in totally inhumane conditions,” said prosecution spokesman Bruno Vekaric of Serbia’s special war crimes court yesterday. The case is the first transferred to Serbia by the UN war crimes tribunal. Nine men are accused of the murder of at least 15 Muslim men in Celopek village in June 1992.

SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgarians are among the nationalities most in favor of the European Union but are poorly informed about the bloc they are due to join in 2007, according to a report released yesterday. Bulgaria ranks equal fourth with Turkey (63 percent) and follows Romania (76 percent) in the list of countries whose citizens think most highly of the EU, the report said. Pollsters questioned 1,004 Bulgarians in October 2004 for the report, produced for the European Commission’s delegation in Bulgaria.

Serbian ultra-nationalists yesterday demanded a halt to “persecution” of the family of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, now entering the fourth year of his trial for genocide before the Hague war crimes tribunal. Submitting a resolution to Parliament, the opposition Radicals and Milosevic’s shrunken Socialist Party charged that reformists who ousted Milosevic in 2000 are happy to see his wife and son languish indefinitely in their self-imposed exile. Their move seemed destined for sure defeat on parliamentary arithmetic alone; the combined 104 votes of the two parties would fall well short of a majority in the 250 assembly. (Reuters)

Bulgaria will receive 70 million euros ($91 million) from an EU pre-accession program to build a new bridge to Romania over the Danube River, Finance Minister Milen Velchev said yesterday. Velchev and the European Commission’s representative to Bulgaria, Dimitris Kourkoulas, signed a financial memorandum on the terms of the agreement in Sofia. (AFP)

Bulgaria’s government, led by ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg, will announce a Cabinet shakeup on Monday in a move analysts said should seal a power-sharing deal and keep it afloat until summer general elections. The changes, expected to be cosmetic, come at a difficult time for Saxe-Coburg, who is seeking a new mandate to lead the poor Balkan state into the EU in 2007. (Reuters)

A Turkish food company has withdrawn a TV commercial for instant soup after Bulgaria took offense at a bribe-taking policeman featured in the ad, the company’s owner said in remarks published yesterday. The theme of the commercial draws on the longstanding complaints of Turkish immigrant workers who travel each summer between Europe and Turkey and claim they are robbed and forced to pay bribes to police in neighboring Bulgaria. In the ad, a policeman stops a Turkish driver and asks for “money for a soup” — a local phrase for a bribe. The driver responds: “What money for soup, neighbor! Here is the best of soups” and offers the policeman several packages of instant soup. (AFP)