NICOSIA (AFP) - Turkey must extend a European Union customs accord to include Cyprus before October if it wants to start accession talks with the 25-member bloc, Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos warned yesterday. He said signing the protocol would be the “first significant step in normalizing relations between the Cyprus Republic and Turkey.” “Turkey must sign the protocol extending the customs union to all new EU member states, including Cyprus, before October 3 when it is set to commence accession negotiations,” Papadopoulos told reporters before leaving for Brussels.

SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgaria’s Defense Minister Nikolay Svinarov said yesterday that he wanted the country’s troops to leave Iraq by the end of the year, and all at the same time. “I am opposed to a staged withdrawal, I want all the troops to be withdrawn together,” Svinarov told journalists after meeting with his Romanian counterpart Theodor Anastassiou. Svinarov is due today to draw up a proposal for the troop withdrawal, which would then go to the Parliament and government for approval.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica hinted yesterday that more war crime suspects would soon surrender to a UN tribunal as demanded by the EU. “I’m optimistic that in the days to come... we will have significant progress that will lead us to full cooperation” with the tribunal, Kostunica said during a visit to EU headquarters. The European Commission, the Union’s executive, says more suspects need to surrender if it is to recommend in a report due at the end of the month that the bloc open talks on a pre-membership agreement with Serbia-Montenegro. (AP)

Germany’s defense minister called yesterday for Kosovo’s disputed status to be resolved quickly and pledged to keep his country’s peacekeepers in the province until the issue was solved. German Defense Minister Peter Struck, who flew to Kosovo for a brief visit after spending time with troops in neighboring Bosnia, said that 2,500 German peacekeepers will stay as part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, but urged action to end the province’s political limbo. The solution to Kosovo’s status “should happen as soon as possible,” Struck said after meeting President Ibrahim Rugova. (AP)

A Romanian disabled students’ organization yesterday said it had sued a professor alleged to have publicly glorified discriminatory Nazi policies against the handicapped. The political science professor is accused of having referred to the disabled as a “burden” on Romanian society and of being an apologist for Nazi Germany’s policies against people with disabilities. “We are calling for legal procedures following the very serious comments Mircea Nicoara... made during a seminar which glorified Nazism and incited hatred against disabled people,” the group’s president Bogdan Baghiu said. (AFP)