FYROM authorities reviewing complaints over election irregularities

SKOPJE (AP) – Authorities in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) said they are reviewing complaints by both the country’s main ethnic Albanian parties over alleged irregularities in Sunday’s parliamentary election rerun. The state electoral commission has received 24 complaints and will announce its decisions by this afternoon, spokesman Zoran Tanevski said yesterday. Tanevski said most of the complaints, from the rival DUI and DPA parties, concerned alleged ballot-stuffing and multiple vote-casting. “The DPA submitted 16 complaints, claiming irregularities in 148 polling stations, while the DUI had eight complaints, concerning 30,” Tanevski said. Electoral commission officials have said a new rerun will be held June 29 at four polling stations where voting could not start Sunday or was stopped due to irregularities. Conducted under tight police security, the rerun confirmed Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s landslide victory on June 1, with 48.8 percent of the nationwide vote.

SARAJEVO (AFP) – Forensic experts said yesterday they had completed the exhumation of a mass grave in eastern Bosnia believed to contain several dozen victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. “We have completed the exhumation. Six complete skeletons have been found as well as 90 other skeletal parts,” Murat Hurtic of Bosnia’s Missing Persons Commission told AFP. The remains would have to be identified and reassembled before a precise number of victims found in the grave could be given, he said. The exhumation began some three weeks ago at a burial site outside the village of Zeleni Jadar, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Srebrenica. The site is the seventh of what are known as the secondary graves to be found in Zeleni Jadar, where Bosnian Serbs brought bodies to cover up the massacre.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – The United Nations Security Council is expected to meet tomorrow to weigh the future of the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) after the newly independent state’s constitution entered into force this week, a UN source said. “This meeting is likely to take place on Friday,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity yesterday. UN chief Ban Ki-moon was expected to address the meeting. Kosovo’s constitution entered into force Sunday, four months after it split from Serbia, opening the way for majority ethnic Albanians take over from a nine-year-old UN mission under European guidance.

Police in an ethnically divided Bosnian town infamous for soccer-related violence said they stepped up security yesterday ahead of Croatia’s Euro 2008 clash with Turkey. Additional forces had been put on standby in the southern town of Mostar, which is split between Croats and Muslims, after it was discovered fans from the two ethnic groups had planned “fights,” said a police spokesman. “We will not tolerate any violence (and) all police units will be ready to act and we will also get some assistance” during the match tomorrow, spokesman Srecko Bosnjak told AFP. (AFP)

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu, wielding new powers after the newly independent state’s constitution came into force, yesterday approved the establishment of its first embassies in nine countries. “The Kosovo president decreed the establishment of diplomatic institutions” in the capitals of the United States, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, said a statement from his office. “These diplomatic missions will be established at the embassy level,” it added, without saying when they might be opened. (AFP)

A Turkish court has begun trying a popular singer on charges of turning the public against military service. Bulent Ersoy faces more than two years in prison for saying during a live television show that if she had children, she would not send them to the army to fight Kurdish rebels. Military service is obligatory for men over the age of 20 and it is a crime to speak against it. Ersoy, who underwent a sex-change operation in 1981 to become a woman, is one of Turkey’s best-loved singers. She was barred from appearing on stage during the 1980s following a military coup by generals who disapproved of her. Ersoy did not appear in court yesterday. (AP)