ANKARA (AP) – A Turkish court convicted a Kurdish politician yesterday and sentenced him to 15 months in prison for inciting hatred after he suggested that Kurds would fight Turkey if it ever attacked Kurds in Iraq. Hilmi Aydogdu was found guilty of threatening public safety after he warned Turkey against taking any action in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Aydogdu, leader of a local branch of a pro-Kurdish party, made the comments last year amid suggestions that Turkey could take military action to prevent Iraqi Kurdish groups from seizing control of Kirkuk. The court in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey, also barred Aydogdu from holding public office. Aydogdu was expected to appeal the verdict.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s war crimes court yesterday sentenced an ethnic Serb former soldier to 29 years in jail and two others to 21 years each for the killing of 23 Muslim civilians early in the country’s 1992-95 war. The court found Mirko Pekez, a second man also named Mirko Pekez and Milorad Savic guilty of the shooting in cold blood of unarmed men, women and children near the western town of Jajce in September 1992. In a separate verdict the court jailed for nine years Dusan Fustar, one of four Bosnian Serbs charged with the persecution, killing, imprisonment and rape of non-Serbs in the notorious Keraterm detention camp in northwestern Bosnia.

The European Union is aiming to sign an agreement with Bosnia on closer ties in May instead of this month as originally hoped, diplomats said yesterday. They said the delay was linked to technical procedures needed to finalize a so-called Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), made possible after Bosnia agreed a long-awaited police reform earlier in April. “These procedures take time,” said one EU diplomat, noting the 27-member bloc had to formally confirm Bosnia had fulfilled all technical conditions for the SAA and translate the text into the various EU languages. (Reuters)

A cabinet minister says Serbia has been cleared of depleted uranium left from NATO bombs dropped in 1999. Ecology Minister Sasa Dragin said yesterday that authorities have removed all the remnants of the bombs. (AP)