LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Slovenians voted yesterday in a presidential election which might give the European Union member its first right-of-center head of state since it broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991. Polling stations for some 1.6 million eligible voters in the small but prosperous Alpine country closed at 1700 GMT, with first official results due late last night. The winner will be inaugurated only days before Slovenia takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU on January 1. Although a largely ceremonial figure, the president will feature prominently in international contacts during the EU presidency. President Janez Drnovsek, a left-winger who has frequently clashed with Prime Minister Janez Jansa's conservative government, is not running for a second five-year term. Turnout in the first four hours was below 17 percent.

SARAJEVO (AP) - Bosnia's top international official said late on Friday that he would be taking measures to stabilize the country and make it more functional. «We can all see that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not functioning right, not functioning as a healthy, normal state,» said Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak. Lajcak announced measures to prevent lawmakers and ministers from blocking reform simply by not attending sessions of parliament or government meetings. Lajcak's announcement comes after local politicians were unable to agree on a crucial reform that was to stabilize the state and bring it closer to the European Union. The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended three-and-a-half years of war, divided the country into a Serb Republic and a Bosnian-Croat Federation - each with an independent police force. The European Union has told Bosnia it must merge the two forces if it wants to take the next steptoward joining the EU.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates will consider shifting US troops from Kosovo to Afghanistan next year if NATO allies do not fulfill their commitments, US government officials said yesterday. Upon the advice of senior military officers, the Pentagon chief has extended the US commitment to Kosovo to summer 2008. If NATO allies have not sent more troops, trainers and equipment to Afghanistan by then, Washington will consider pulling its 1,600 troops out of NATO's Kosovo force KFOR. «The secretary is disappointed in NATO's inability to live up to its commitments and if that doesn't change before then, he's prepared to... discuss yanking our troops out of Kosovo,» Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. (Reuters)