SARAJEVO (AFP) - EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn yesterday officially opened landmark negotiations on closer ties between Bosnia and the 25-member EU. “Today marks a new phase in the relationship between the EU and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The official opening of negotiations... for a stabilization and association agreement is proof of your success,” Rehn said. The technical details of the negotiations are due to start at a later date.

ANKARA (AP) - Kurdish politicians have appealed to Denmark’s prime minister to ignore Turkish demands to shut down a Danish-based Kurdish satellite television station, their party said yesterday. Turkey accuses Roj TV of being a mouthpiece for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and has called on Denmark to shut the station down. Danish authorities say they are still investigating, while Roj TV insists it has no links to the rebels.

Serbian authorities returned the remains of 41 ethnic Albanian war victims to Kosovo yesterday, officials said. The bodies belong to ethnic Albanian civilians believed to have been killed by Serb forces during the 1998-1999 war and removed from Kosovo in an apparent cover-up attempt by former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. The bodies were given to the UN authorities in the border area of Merdare, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the provincial capital, Pristina. (AP)

An airliner of Italian flag-carrier Alitalia with 146 passengers aboard made an emergency landing at Sofia yesterday with one of its two engines out of action, Bulgaria’s Transport Ministry said. The occupants of the Boeing 767, heading for Italy from Dubai, were unharmed. (AFP)

Serbia-Montenegro has canceled a UNESCO-funded project because it included poems glorifying the two most wanted war criminals from Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said yesterday. The poems depicted wartime Bosnian-Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, 60, and his general Ratko Mladic, 63, as heroes, independent B92 radio reported. (AFP)