PARIS (AP) - Nearly 400 children who Libyan authorities say were intentionally infected with the virus that causes AIDS are now being treated in European hospitals, French and Italian officials said yesterday. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said he hoped the move would improve relations as a Libyan court deliberates over the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor charged with infecting the children in the Libyan city of Benghazi in the 1990s. The case has drawn international criticism. “The Libyan children with AIDS were taken in by several European cities where they are undergoing treatment for their disease,” Mattei told an online news conference.

ZAGREB (AFP) - A majority of Croatians are still against their country becoming a NATO member despite US President George W. Bush’s personal backing for Zagreb’s bid to join the alliance, a poll released yesterday showed. A total of 47.4 percent of those questioned opposed Croatia becoming a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, compared with 35.3 percent who supported the move, said the poll conducted by the Jutarnji List newspaper.

The EU reminded Albania yesterday that holding free and fair elections was an important factor in its hope to eventually join the bloc. Albania is to hold local elections between December 20 and January 20, but the two main political parties have yet to begin an electoral reform they agreed to in late August after international mediation. They even disagree on the date of the municipal vote, with the opposition Socialist Party saying it should not be held until the spring because Albania’s bitterly cold winters could prevent people in rural areas from voting. (AP)

Thousands of Serbs rallied in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica yesterday in support of a proposed new constitution for Serbia which would enshrine the breakaway province as forever Serbian. “We adopted this constitution to tell the whole world that Kosovo is the birthplace of Serbia,” Ivica Dacic of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia told a crowd of 5,000. “We’ll use all means to fight for Kosovo.” Serbia votes this weekend on a new constitution to replace Milosevic’s 1990 document that stripped Kosovo of its autonomy. (Reuters)

The European Commission announced yesterday that Bulgaria’s European Integration Minister Meglena Kuneva would become EU commissioner for consumer protection. (AFP)