SARAJEVO (AFP) – The international envoy to Bosnia warned yesterday of possible “consequences” after two of the country’s three presidents effectively urged the UN to abolish Bosnia’s Serb entity. The Muslim and Croat members of Bosnia’s three-member presidency, Haris Silajdzic and Zeljko Komsic, sent a letter Monday to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling on him to “annul the results of genocide.” The pair say the Serb entity – Republika Srpska – should be abolished because a February ruling by the International Court of Justice showed it had been established on genocide committed during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. “This letter... further adds to (the) deterioration of political relations in the country,” the envoy to Bosnia, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, said in response yesterday. “It is clear that this is not an official act of the government or presidency of this country,” he added.

SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgaria has granted citizenship to a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death along with five Bulgarian nurses for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus, Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said yesterday. The decision could help bring him out of Libya if the verdicts are eventually commuted under a possible deal to compensate the families. Today, Libya’s Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the medics who say they are innocent and were tortured to make confessions.

Bosnia’s war crimes court acquitted Serb Zoran Jankovic yesterday on charges of crimes against humanity committed during the Bosnian 1992-95 war. Jankovic, 47, is the first suspect the court has found not guilty since it was launched in 2005. The indictment alleged that Jankovic participated in the killing of 36 Muslim villagers and wounding three others in April 1992 and in setting the victims’ bodies on fire to cover up the crime, it said. It also alleged he took part in the forced removal of captured civilians following an attack on two eastern Bosnian villages. (Reuters)

A US citizen of Bosnian origin surrendered to police after threatening to set off a hand grenade yesterday inside the offices of a Sarajevo-based newspaper, police said. “He turned himself in following negotiations,” said Sarajevo police spokesman Jusuf Zornic. The man had entered the classified advertising department of the Dnevni Avaz daily late yesterday morning and revealed the grenade. Police converged on the scene and evacuated members of staff. In a statement, the newspaper identified the man as Enver Mujkic, who it added had made the threat because the paper had refused to publish his advertisement the previous day. The advert had contained “insults against Islamic, Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities,” it said. (AFP)