BELGRADE (AP) - Defying international pressure, Serbia-Montenegro’s justice minister said in remarks published yesterday that his government will not arrest four top war crimes suspects sought by the UN war crimes tribunal. Zoran Stojkovic told the Blic daily that the arrest of the four Serb generals, indicted by the tribunal in The Hague for war crimes allegedly committed by their troops in Kosovo in 1999, “would be dangerous for the country’s stability.” The generals are former army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, his former deputy, Vladimir Lazarevic, and police generals Vlastimir Djordjevic and Sreten Lukic.

BUCHAREST (AFP) - A second man died yesterday after a rabid bear went on the rampage in a central Romanian town at the weekend biting eight people. “The 55-year-old man had been badly bitten in the head and the stomach, and died after his condition weakened, due to being diabetic. His death was not caused by rabies,” Ioan Grigoriu, a hospital official in Brasov, told AFP. He added that a second man admitted to hospital after the bear attack was in a critical condition. Although the other victims might have to have limbs amputated, their lives were not in danger. The victims were bitten on Saturday by a brown bear searching for food in the Brasov area. Six other people, who were also attacked before the bear was killed, were vaccinated on Monday.

A 12-year-old boy has shot dead a schoolmate, also aged 12, in a school in southern Turkey in what police believe was the latest episode in a blood feud between their families, media reports said yesterday. The victim, Mehmet Aytis, died in hospital after the other boy, identified only as K.U., shot him in the head following a brawl between the two in the yard of the school in the city of Adana. The alleged murderer was taken into custody at the juvenile section of the local police station. (AFP)

Two Bosnian boys were killed when a land mine left from the country’s 1992-95 war went off near the southern town of Mostar, a media report said yesterday. The two shepherds, aged 10 and 11, were seen playing with a land mine on Monday when it exploded on a plateau on the Velez mountain, Dnevni Avaz quoted a witness as saying. The area is on the former front line. (AFP)