THE HAGUE (Combined reports) - Slobodan Milosevic is at serious risk of suffering a heart attack, a UN medical examination of the former president has found. “Milosevic is a man with severe cardiovascular risk which requires future monitoring,” the presiding judge, Richard May, said in court yesterday. Details of the medical report were not released. The trial chamber of the UN war crimes court recommended that Milosevic, who has been leading his own defense, appoint legal counsel to reduce his workload. “His workload must be reduced and the medical treatment by a cardiologist is most advisable,” May said. But Milosevic, who does not recognize the tribunal, refused, saying: “This entire matter is a farce. I have no intention of appointing counsel for a non-existent court.” The report comes after the tribunal delayed Milosevic’s trial last week over concern that his blood pressure was too high. It was the third time the trial was interrupted because of Milosevic’s health since it opened in February. (AP, AFP)

SARAJEVO (AP) - Investigators from the international war crime tribunal searched the headquarters of a Bosnian army corps and seized documents that could be related to war crimes committed during Bosnia’s war, officials said yesterday. Investigators from the Hague-based UN tribunal in the Netherlands were accompanied by troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force during the search Wednesday, said Cmdr. John Coppard, a spokesman for the peacekeeping force known as SFOR. The search of the corps, located in Tuzla, took nine hours. “The investigators were searching for information and evidence related to suspected war crimes committed during the Bosnian war,” Coppard said, adding that corps staff was cooperative. No details about the seized documents were released.

Bulgarians will once again be able to consult files kept on them by the communist-era secret police, Interior Minister Georgi Petkanov said yesterday, three months after Parliament suspended access to the archives. Petkanov signed a decree reopening the files kept on an estimated 600,000 Bulgarians by the secret police under the former regime. Since 1997, Bulgarian citizens have been able to ask the Interior Ministry whether a secret police file was compiled on them, and have access to it if it still exists. But Parliament voted on April 19 to suspend access just as a commission was due to open the files of senior journalists, bank and insurance company bosses, judges and clergy, and publish a full list of communist-era agents and informers. The closure of the archives was decided as part of a bill to prepare Bulgaria for entry into NATO. Under the interior minister’s decree, the files will be open to the public and to scholars and writers. (AFP)

At least 14 people died and 18 others were missing in just one province after three days of flooding and rainstorms battered northeast Turkey, bringing the nationwide death toll to 26, officials said yesterday. “We’ve started all of the necessary assistance and it will continue,” Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit told reporters after expressing his condolences to the flood victims. (Reuters)

A bus carrying tourists rolled down a steep hill near Pristina, Yugoslavia, early yesterday, killing 10 and injuring 31, a UN spokesman said. The bus went off the road at a sharp turn on a steep incline, rolling down a hillside before stopping, said Barry Fletcher, a spokesman for the UN police. The accident happened about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of the provincial capital, Pristina, just across the border separating Kosovo and Montenegro. (AP)