PARIS (Reuters) – Serbian officials have said that searching for suspected war criminals on the run is not their top priority, the new chief UN war crimes prosecutor said in an interview published yesterday. Belgian Serge Brammertz, the new head of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), took over in January from Carla del Ponte. On a visit to Belgrade last week, Brammertz said Serbia needed to do more to cooperate with the Hague tribunal. Asked in an interview with French daily Le Monde what his assessment of Serbian cooperation was, Brammertz said: “I will see how it evolves in the coming weeks before determining whether it is positive or not. But I think our Serbian interlocutors admit quite openly that given the political situation, the search for the fugitives is not the top priority.” Those fugitives include wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic.

THE HAGUE (AP) – A UN appeals panel overturned the murder conviction and reduced the sentence late on Tuesday of a Bosnian army commander in charge of Muslim fighters who murdered and tortured Bosnian Serbs and Croats in the Balkan wars in 1993. Enver Hadzihasanovic was originally convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in March 2006 of one murder count for failing to prevent mujahedeen volunteers from killing two prisoners. But the UN court’s appeals chamber ruled that the foreigners, many of them veterans of the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan that ended in 1989, were beyond the control of Hadzihasanovic’s 3rd Corps of the regular Bosnian Muslim army. It also overturned part of his conviction for failing to prevent or punish the cruel treatment of prisoners held at makeshift camps in Bosnia in 1993.

Kosovo remains unstable over two months after it declared independence from Serbia, and NATO forces will need to remain for years to come, Ireland’s defense minister said yesterday. The minister, Willie O’Dea, said NATO-led peacekeepers will be busy securing the world’s youngest country as tensions remain high between its ethnic Albanian majority and minority Serbs. “The situation remains quite unstable. More unstable then anticipated,” O’Dea told The Associated Press as he visited about 300 Irish troops in southern Kosovo. (AP)

Bulgaria’s soccer federation has suspended six referees for making significant mistakes in recent premier league and Bulgarian Cup matches. Angel Bekyarov, who was temporarily removed from the officials list for errors in October 2006, was one of three referees banned until the end of the season. Bekyarov was suspended after making mistakes during Litex Lovech’s 1-1 draw at Beroe Stara Zagora on Sunday and during Cherno More Varna’s 3-1 win at Kaliakra Kavarna in the Cup semifinal four days earlier. Trendafil Dumbalakov, Bekyarov’s assistant at one of the games, was also banned until the end of the season while another assistant, Nikolay Angelov, has been suspended for five matches. (Reuters)