BELGRADE (AP) - Some active Serbia-Montenegro army officers had communications with war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic, indicating hardliners in the military may be sheltering him, a government official said. The Defense Ministry will issue a report next week on who had links with the wartime Bosnian-Serb commander and what army intelligence knew the whereabouts of Mladic and other top fugitives, said Rasim Ljajic, who heads a government agency in charge of cooperation with the the Hague tribunal.

DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) - Kurdish rebels battling Turkish security forces released a Turkish policeman in northern Iraq yesterday after holding him hostage for more than three months, a human rights official said. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) handed over Hakan Acil to a delegation from Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) in Iraq, the group’s regional head Mehdi Perincek told Reuters.

Turkey has begun to ration electricity and its regions will suffer temporary power cuts due to natural gas supply problems, energy officials said yesterday. Turkey has seen a drop in natural gas imports from Iran over the past 10 days due to harsh winter weather. On Thursday, nearly two dozen factories in northwestern Turkey had their natural gas supplies cut, though these later resumed. (Reuters)

Turkey earned 18.15 billion dollars (14.9 billion euros) from its booming tourism sector last year, a 14 percent increase from 2004 and just higher than a government target, the statistics institute announced yesterday. About 20.5 million foreigners visited the country last year, bringing in 13.9 billion dollars, the institute said in a statement published by the Anatolia news agency. The government had set a target for tourism revenues in 2005 of 18 billion dollars. It earned 15.9 billion dollars in 2004. (AFP)

Prosecutors said yesterday they had charged Romanian Deputy Prime Minister George Copos with tax evasion as Romania seeks to boost its EU membership hopes by tackling allegations of corruption. Copos is the first senior official to face charges in a crackdown on graft aimed at proving former communist Romania’s fitness to join the 25-member EU. (Reuters)

An Austrian Airlines jet en route to Moldova made an emergency landing in the Romanian city of Cluj after a door warning sounded in the cockpit, the airline said yesterday. The flight from Vienna to the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, was diverted to Cluj on Thursday evening and landed safely at about 6 p.m., airline officials said. (AP)