BELGRADE (AP) - Russia agreed to take 2.3 metric tons of spent fuel from a decommissioned Serbian nuclear reactor, in a measure aimed at ensuring the waste does not end up in terrorist hands, a Serbian official said yesterday. A $10 million (7.8 million euros) deal for the transport of about 8,000 spent fuel rods from the Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Vinca, just outside Belgrade, to Russia was signed last week in Vienna, Austria, at an International Atomic Energy Agency conference, Serbia’s Science Minister Aleksandar Popovic said.

TUNCELI, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish rebels killed an army officer yesterday in Turkey’s troubled southeast, security officials said, and also claimed responsibility for a weekend bombing that wounded 12 people. The officials said members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed the officer and wounded two village guards in an ambush in the province of Mardin. Separately, the PKK claimed responsibility for Saturday’s truck explosion which wounded three policemen and nine other people.

A decision by FYROM’s prime minister to keep former guerrillas out of government threatens progress made under a 2001 peace pact that ended an insurgency, the insurgents’ leader said yesterday. Ali Ahmeti, who is now leader of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), said Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s move had dented public trust and that a lack of trust was at the root of the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s. (Reuters)

A Belgrade daily yesterday published a poster in support of top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, who is sought on genocide charges by a UN court. The poster was distributed along with the Monday edition of the popular Glas daily. The Independent Journalists’ Association said in a statement that the move by the Glas publication was “unacceptable.” (AP)