ZAGREB (AP) - Posters of a fugitive war crimes suspect were pasted across several Croatian towns yesterday as the EU’s decision to delay the start of membership talks with the country triggered a wave of defiance. Photos of General Ante Gotovina are appearing across the country, and support for EU membership has fallen further, two days after the EU said Croatia hadn’t done everything it could to arrest and extradite Gotovina. A poll published in the leading Vecernji list daily yesterday showed that only 44 percent of 450 people questioned favored EU membership — down 3 percent from just a month ago. Only 8 percent of people thought the government should arrest Gotovina.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Rescue workers struggled yesterday to locate people buried beneath a landslide, one day after earth engulfed their homes in a village in central Turkey. Fifteen people were still missing and nine others were being treated in hospital for injuries. The landslide destroyed 21 homes. An official told Reuters the tide of mud had not completely abated and that this was badly hampering rescue work.

The EU will look to cut the size of its peacekeeping operation in Bosnia if conditions on the ground remain peaceful, EU defense ministers said yesterday. The EU inherited the Bosnian mission from NATO last December and initially maintained troop levels at around 7,000. “The future will be less soldiers, more police,” Luxembourg Defense Minister Luc Frieden told reporters on the margins of a meeting of defense ministers hosted by his country. He gave no time frame for when troop numbers could be cut. “It (the EU) won’t bring them below 5,000,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said. (Reuters)

Human rights violations decreased in Turkey in 2004 but are still at an “unacceptable level” compared to EU norms, Turkey’s main human rights group said yesterday. “We can speak of a general improvement when we compare the 2004 human rights record to that of 2003,” Yusuf Alatas, the head of the Human Rights Association (IHD), told a news conference unveiling the group’s annual human rights report. “But if we assess the figures without comparing them to previous years, the situation is not encouraging at all,” he said. (AFP)

CIA agents took part in dozens of unsuccessful attempts by Serbian police in 2003 to capture Bosnian-Serb wartime commander and indicted war criminal, Gen. Ratko Mladic, a former prime minister said yesterday. Zoran Zivkovic, who headed Serbia’s government from March 2003 until a year ago, said that the Serbian-US cooperation in the hunt for Mladic had been agreed with former secretary of state Colin Powell, Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet and other top US officials. (AP)