SARAJEVO (AFP) – The families of thousands of people who went missing during the 1990s Balkan wars urged the authorities in the region on Saturday to deliver answers about the fate of their missing relatives. “The government authorities have an obligation to provide answers about the fate of their missing citizens,” the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) said in a statement. “Family members will continue to exert pressure on the highest-level political leaders in the region to do everything in their power to enable the release of information and to speed up the process of resolving this important regional human rights issue.” The appeal was launched after a conference that gathered more than 60 representatives of associations representing families of missing persons and relevant government institutions from Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, UN-administered Serbian province of Kosovo and international organizations. The participants have met over the past three days in the northeastern Bosnian town of Brcko.

TIRANA (AP) – Albania’s bitter political climate has been affecting the ability to carry out much-needed electoral reforms before upcoming local elections, according to a report released by a leading European security organization. The political dialogue between Albania’s main political parties – the governing Democratic Party and main opposition Socialist Party – has been “strained by an increasingly polarized atmosphere, lack of trust, and displays of acrimony,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s report said. The report, by the Vienna, Austria-based OSCE’s office specializing in election monitoring, was issued Friday and made available Saturday.

A fugitive being tried in absentia for the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was arrested Saturday in Belgrade, police said. Aleksandar Simovic – an alleged member of the underworld Zemun Clan charged with taking part in the slaying of Djindjic outside the Serbian government headquarters in March 2003 – was captured in an apartment in the New Belgrade residential area, the police said. “Acting on an arrest warrant and after an intense search, police arrested Simovic,” a police statement said. (AP)

Bosnian Serbs on Saturday slammed the international community and in particular Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, for sending congratulations for the Balkan country’s Statehood Day, claiming that such a holiday did not exist. “Bosnia did not establish a single joint state holiday,” Bosnian-Serb President Milan Jelic said. Bosnian Serbs are “surprised at the congratulations of other countries’ representatives and (top) international envoy to Bosnia” on what it called “the non-existent statehood day.”