ANKARA (AFP) - The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) warned Turkey yesterday that it would face “disaster” if it launched joint military action with the United States to clean up rebel camps in northern Iraq. Ankara has long pressed Washington to act against the rebels and has threatened to carry out cross-border incursions. “Should a joint military attack with the US against our movement come up on the agenda, it would be a disaster and not a solution,” senior PKK commander Murat Karayilan said in an interview with the Kurdish Firat News Agency. “It would lead to... long-running resistance,” he warned in the interview published on the agency’s Internet site. “No one would bow down, no matter how intense the attacks may be.”

BRUSSELS (AFP) - Austria will respect EU commitments to Turkey but cannot guarantee that any chapters in membership talks with the bloc will open before July, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said yesterday. Turkey was allowed to start European Union membership talks on October 4, but only after strong opposition to its candidacy from Austria had been overcome, and Ankara has no guarantee that it will eventually be invited in. “There is no reason to have the slightest doubt” about Austria’s stance toward Turkey, Plassnik told reporters after describing the aims of her country’s EU presidency, which begins on January 1, taking over from Britain. She said that Austria “takes very seriously, in a sincere and open spirit of good relations, its role as (EU) president toward Turkey.”

Bosnia’s war crimes court announced yesterday that it had indicted 11 Bosnian Serbs on genocide charges for their alleged role in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica. The 11, detained during 2005, are suspected of “committing the crime of genocide... by killing over a thousand Bosnian (Muslim) men,” the court said in a statement on July 13, 2005, announcing the first genocide indictment issued in the Balkan country. The killings were a part of a weeklong killing spree by Bosnian-Serb forces and took place at a warehouse of an agricultural cooperative near Srebrenica, it added. (AFP)

An explosion in Tirana shook the offices of Albania’s largest daily newspaper causing damage but no injuries, the newspaper said yesterday. A bomb detonated Sunday at 2020 GMT outside the offices of Shekulli, which means Century in Albanian, the newspaper’s editor in chief Robert Rakipllari said. About 15 staff members were working at the time, he said. “We have had no conflict. We have had no threats. I’m sure this was some type of warning, but I can’t explain it,” Rakipllari told The Associated Press. “It was a great shake and the Internet stopped for a second because of the explosion,” Rakipllari said. Police were investigating. Prime Minister Sali Berisha called Rakipllari to ask about the blast. (AP)

NATO’s commander for Southeastern Europe told Serbia-Montenegro’s foreign minister yesterday that handing over remaining war crimes fugitives was critical for the Balkan country. “It is absolutely essential... that all the fugitives be brought to justice,” said Adm. Harry Ulrich, US naval forces and NATO commander based in Naples, Italy. Belgrade has been trying to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace program — a stepping stone to full membership — but the main obstacle to this has been its failure to extradite war crimes suspects. (AP)