ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish police, assisted by British and Italian colleagues, were on full alert yesterday as fans flocked to Istanbul for tonight’s Champions League final between Liverpool and AC Milan. The 70,000-plus tickets available for the game have already been sold out. Nearly 9,000 security forces — police, security guards and paramilitary troops — will be on duty in Istanbul for the game.

BELGRADE (AFP) - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is “rehabilitating” aspects of the ousted regime of nationalist strongman Slobodan Milosevic and endangering Balkan stability, an independent think-tank said yesterday. “Overall, the government... still appears intent on rehabilitating significant portions of the Milosevic legacy by appointing Milosevic-era personnel in the police, judiciary and military,” the report by Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said.

The citizens of Montenegro remain deeply split over whether the Balkan republic should be independent or stay in a union with Serbia, an opinion poll showed yesterday. The poll released by the CEDEM agency showed that about 40.5 percent of Montenegrins favor independence for their republic, while 36 percent want it to remain in a Serbia-Montenegro union together with the much larger senior partner. (AP)

Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek yesterday accused of “treason” a group of Turkish academics organizing a conference in Istanbul to question Turkey’s official position on the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, the Anatolia news agency reported. “This is a stab in the back to the Turkish nation... this is irresponsibility,” Anatolia quoted Cicek as saying at a parliamentary debate. (AFP)

In a boost to Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica’s government, Serbia’s Parliament yesterday dismissed an opposition bid for a no-confidence vote in the Cabinet. The ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party had demanded that Kostunica’s government be ousted over the extradition to the UN war crimes tribunal earlier this year of Serb police general Sreten Lukic. (AP)

US President George W. Bush is to receive Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on June 8, the White House announced yesterday. (AFP)

Serbia won’t accept independence for Kosovo, the country’s deputy prime minister said yesterday, ahead of a top-level meeting to plot Serbia’s strategy for the future of the volatile province. “We don’t think that Kosovo’s independence, conditional or unconditional, is an acceptable solution for Serbia,” Miroljub Labus told reporters. (AP)