SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The West will be making a terrible mistake if it leaves Bosnia before the ripples have settled from Serbia’s Kosovo province becoming independent, former US envoy Richard Holbrooke said yesterday. “It will be a terrible mistake to change structures in Bosnia before something that might be a very difficult period in Kosovo is overcome,” the former US diplomat told Dnevni Avaz daily in an interview. “The withdrawal of the US troops and reduced engagement of my country in Bosnia is a terrible mistake,” he said. The office of the international peace overseer is set to close down in mid-2007 and be succeeded by a lighter EU representative body.

BRUSSELS (AP) – Many Serbs are demanding that their ex-Yugoslav republic severs diplomatic relations with countries which recognize an independent Kosovo, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said yesterday. Draskovic warned that independence imposed by the international community against Belgrade’s will would have dire consequences on the future of the region. “There are very strong public demands, from many intellectuals, members of Parliament... that Serbia... cut off diplomatic and economic relations with all countries which will recognize any puppet state of Kosovo within the territory of our own state.”

Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu yesterday asked the country’s president to fire the agriculture minister as his government was gripped by political infighting less than six weeks before Romania joins the European Union. Tariceanu asked Gheorghe Flutur to resign from the cabinet, but the minister refused, saying that the political disagreements – he quit as vice president of the governing Liberal Party to join a breakaway group – were unrelated to his government job and that he wanted to complete reforms linked to the country’s accession to the EU on January 1. It was unclear whether President Traian Basescu will agree to fire Flutur. (AP)

Croatia has asked Norway to extradite a man sentenced to 12 years in jail for war crimes against civilians during the 1991-1995 Croatian independence war, the Justice Ministry said yesterday. Damir “Sico” Sireta, 43, who was detained in Norway on October 6, was convicted in his absence in 2000 by a court in the eastern town of Vukovar. The verdict is final as Croatia’s Supreme Court has upheld it. (AFP)