OHRID (AP) - Balkan leaders agreed yesterday to tighten security on their borders in a joint effort to crack down on organized crime and rampant trafficking in drugs, weapons and people. The leaders, together with international and regional officials, closed a two-day conference with an ambitious plan to more strictly control the over 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) of national borders created by the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. In documents adopted at the conference organized by NATO, the EU and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, leaders — including top officials from Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria and UN administrators running the southern Serbian province of Kosovo — agreed to step up border surveillance and pledged to combat illegal migration and human trafficking.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned yesterday that time was running out for the country to meet European democracy norms in order to start formal talks on joining the European Union. “The point we have reached is a critical one,” Gul said during a parliamentary debate on Turkey’s EU membership bid. “In the coming year and a half, we could either open the door to EU negotiations or shut it for good.” The EU will assess Turkey’s democratization progress in December 2004 before deciding whether to open accession talks with the country, the laggard among the 13 candidates.

Turkey urged US lawmakers yesterday to drop consideration of a draft resolution describing as genocide the killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I. “We expect the US Congress and the US administration to make the necessary efforts so that this draft is not adopted,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said. The judiciary committee of the lower house of the US Congress on Thursday passed a draft resolution reaffirming its support for a 1948 international convention on the prevention of genocide, in which the mass killings of Armenians were referred to as “genocide.” (AFP)

A team of 20 Turkish rescuers left for Algeria Friday to help in the search for survivors after a strong earthquake there killed more than 1,000 people. Ankara also sent medical supplies and tents. (AFP)

UN officials handed over the remains of seven Kosovo Serb war victims yesterday to relatives waiting at the province’s border with Serbia. The return of the victims — about four years after the fighting ended — is part of an extensive UN project in Kosovo to find those missing in the war, uncover mass graves and identify the remains. The bodies were to be buried on Saturday. (AP)

The World Bank granted Romania a US$60 million loan yesterday to improve education in rural areas, the bank said in a statement. (AP)