Sofia (AP) - President Georgi Parvanov summoned France’s ambassador yesterday over comments by French President Jacques Chirac chiding East European nations for their support for Washington on the issue of Iraq. At a meeting with French Ambassador Jean-Loup Kuhn-Delforge, Parvanov “expressed concern about... the emotional statement by French President Jacques Chirac regarding Bulgaria’s position on Iraq,” the presidential press office announced. “Bulgaria insists on mutual respect between EU members and applicant countries, between big and small states,” Parvanov said. “Pressure by one state on another should not be allowed.”

Washington (AP) - US authorities recovered a list of 20 financiers they suspect funneled money to Osama bin Laden and others extremist Muslim causes among a cache of documents that provide insight into the financing of terrorism, an unsealed court record shows. The seized documents are a “treasure trove” and among other things indicate Al Qaeda military leaders were at times paid salaries from Muslim charity proceeds and purchased weapons with money from charity leaders, prosecutors said, in a court filing in the case of the head of a Muslim foundation, Enaam Arnaout, who pleaded guilty last week in Chicago to illegally buying boots and uniforms for fighting forces in Chechnya and Bosnia. Other evidence seized in March 2002 from the Bosnian offices of the Benevolence International Foundation, an Illinois-based Muslim charity, includes handwritten correspondence to and from bin Laden and documents detailing the origins, growth and expansion of his Al Qaeda network in the 1980s and 1990s.

Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial was shown a secret video yesterday which captured the ex-Yugoslav president at a ceremony paying tribute to Serb paramilitaries accused of ethnic cleansing. Prosecutors are trying to establish a direct link between Milosevic and shadowy paramilitary units — allegedly controlled by Serbian state security — accused of atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia in 1991-95. The 1997 video shot in a paramilitary camp in the Vojvodina region of northern Serbia showed Milosevic shaking hands with state security paramilitaries involved in special operations to seize territory in Croatia and Bosnia. (Reuters)

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) will adopt a law on cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, the country’s top prosecutor Aleksandar Prcevski said yesterday after meeting the court’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte. “The Macedonian judiciary authorities and Del Ponte agreed to pass the law in order to avoid any problems,” Prcevski told reporters in Skopje, capital of the former Yugoslav republic. The UN war crimes court in the Netherlands has been investigating five cases of possible war crimes committed during the 2001 seven-month conflict between government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels of National Liberation Army (NLA). (AFP)

Goran Svilanovic, the foreign minister of Serbia and Montenegro, arrived in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, yesterday to discuss better cooperation between the two Balkan neighbors. He met with the Bosnian three-member presidency, Bosnia’s top international official, Paddy Ashdown, and the foreign minister, Mladen Ivanic. “We remain decided to get together again but within the European Union. That’s the only natural framework for both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia-Montenegro,” Svilanovic said. (AP)