BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Union approved yesterday a Swiss role in its police and justice mission in Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in February. The decision was taken by EU interior ministers without debate. Switzerland is to make a modest contribution – a few dozen personnel – to the mission, which will number around 1,900 police, legal and customs experts when it is fully operational, a Swiss official in Brussels said. It joins Norway, Turkey and the USA among the non-EU members of the mission, dubbed EULEX and meant to help chaperone Kosovo to independence. Only around 350 people are taking part in EULEX so far, with Serbia and Russia holding up its deployment across the ethnic Albanian majority region, including in its Serbian-dominated areas. EU officials hope it will be fully operational in the fall.

KARS, Turkey (Reuters) – Leaders of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan launched a railway project between the three countries yesterday, building on links forged by gas and oil pipelines. At a railway station in the eastern Turkish border town of Kars, the presidents of the three countries held a ground-breaking ceremony for the 290 million lira ($241.06 million) Turkish section of the railway. The three are linked by the BP-led Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas line but trade links between Turkey and the Caucasus region are limited. Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev placed three sections of railway track on a large map of the region in a symbolic launch of the project as confetti showered down. “With this project, the historic Silk Road is being reinvigorated,” Gul said in a speech. “The project is open to all countries in the region who want to contribute to good neighborly relations, peace and prosperity,” he said.

ZAGREB (AP) – A Croatian news agency says a convicted plane hijacker is returning to Croatia after serving 30 years in jail in the United States. The state-run agency HINA quoted the wife of Zvonko Busic as saying he would be returning yesterday after being granted parole for hijacking a TWA flight in 1976. Busic led the group of hijackers to draw attention to Croatia’s struggle for independence from communist Yugoslavia and later surrendered. But a bomb they stashed in a locker at New York’s Grand Central Station exploded when police tried to defuse it, killing one officer and blinding a second. Busic, revered by some in Croatia as a hero, was convicted in 1977 of air piracy and granted parole earlier this month.

A Kosovan journalist who revealed the identity of a protected witness during a war crimes trial at The Hague was found guilty of contempt of court and fined 7,000 euros yesterday. Baton Haxhiu, the former chief editor of the Kosovan daily newspaper Express, published the name and location of the witness during the trial of Kosovo’s ex-prime minister Ramush Haradinaj. Haradinaj, who was also a former leader of the Kosovan Liberation Army, was in April acquitted of charges of ethnic cleansing, including rape, murder and torture, sparking outrage in Serbia. Haxhiu, arrested in Pristina in May, had pleaded not guilty to contempt. (AFP)

Romania’s Health Ministry says it has proposed a law allowing under-15s to have an abortion at up to 24 weeks. Current legislation does not allow for abortions beyond 14 weeks, except to save a woman’s life and in the case of extraordinary circumstances. The circumstances are not specified in the law. The proposal comes after the highly publicized case of an 11-year-old rape and incest victim. A government panel ruled she could have an abortion at 21 weeks as an exceptional case. However, there were protests from religious groups. She terminated the pregnancy in Britain earlier this month. (AP)