BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romania will keep all of its troops in Iraq for at least the next few months even as Britain, a key ally in the US-led force, plans withdrawals, Defense Minister Sorin Frunzaverde said yesterday. “Events (in Iraq) are generating missions for our troops there... so in the next few months we don’t plan to reduce our military presence,” Frunzaverde told Reuters in an interview. Polls show about 60 percent of the public want withdrawal.

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan and Romania pledged yesterday to cooperate with each other in resolving the problems of their citizens kidnapped by North Korea, the Foreign Ministry said. The pledge was made in a 45-minute meeting here between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Romanian counterpart Calin Tariceanu, the ministry said in a statement. Tariceanu arrived here on a three-day visit on Wednesday as the first Romanian prime minister to visit Japan. Charles Jenkins, a former US Army deserter who lived in North Korea for four decades before settling in Japan with his Japanese wife – a former kidnap victim – has said he knew of a Romanian woman who was kidnapped and forced to live in North Korea. Romania maintained close ties with North Korea until its dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed in a popular revolution in 1989.

A man wanted for allegedly mutilating and murdering an elderly woman in New York City in 1990, and suspected of killing several women in Europe, has been arrested in Montenegro, police said yesterday. Smail Tulja, 67, was taken into custody from his home in the capital, Podgorica, on an international arrest warrant issued by the FBI and Interpol, police said. Tulja is accused of the 1990 murder of Mary Beal in the Bronx, New York, whom he befriended while working there as a taxi driver. The 61-year-old woman disappeared in September 1990 and her dismembered body was found weeks later, police said. Tulja was taken to court later yesterday for arraignment. (AP)

A Bulgarian court ruled yesterday to keep an arrested Turkmen opposition activist in detention for another 40 days before it decides whether to extradite him. The district court in the Black Sea city of Varna where Annadurdy Khajiyev, a senior member of the exiled Watan party, was detained on February 19, said he was wanted by Interpol after Turkmenistan accused him of misappropriating $20 million (–14.5 million). “The court decided to keep Khajiyev for 40 days... He has been accused of misappropriation of large sums of money from the national bank of his country,” the court said in a statement. (Reuters)