SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov called yesterday for “a rapid and efficient UN engagement” in Iraq and said he planned to raise the matter with US President George Bush. Parvanov said he was scheduled to meet Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski soon and they would jointly push for a strong United Nations role in Iraq. Parvanov said he and Kwasniewski were also both in favor “of a more rigorous NATO engagement in Iraq.”

BELGRADE (AP) - The nationalist Serbian Radical Party has launched a parliamentary initiative to try to oust Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic because of a recent comment about the Kosovo conflict. Draskovic recently acknowledged that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces had carried out “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo as part of a campaign against independence-seeking ethnic Albanians in the province. Serbian Radical Party official Gordana Pop-Lazic said the minister’s comments “effectively justify the criminal NATO bombing of Serbs.”

Turkish police have detained 30 people suspected of smuggling immigrants from Asia and Africa to Europe, cracking down on a major ring with the help of British and Italian intelligence agencies, reports said yesterday. Police launched simultaneous raids on safe houses in Istanbul, Ankara, and the provinces of Hatay, Canakkale and Agri, detaining 30 members of the smuggling group, including their ringleader, CNN-Turk television reported, citing police sources. (AP)

Britain has lifted its objection to a bid by Croatia to join the EU in light of the surrender of eight suspected war criminals to a UN court in The Hague, Britain’s minister for European affairs, Denis MacShane, said yesterday. But, in a statement issued by the British Embassy here, he cautioned that “Croatia needs to maintain full cooperation and take all necessary steps to ensure that (its leading indicted war criminal) Ante Gotovina is located and transferred to The Hague.” (AFP)

NATO has rejected several Muslim and Croat candidates for top posts in the joint command of Bosnia’s separate ethnic armies because of alleged involvement in war crimes, an official said yesterday. The move is likely to cause further delays in setting up the joint command, a pre-condition for Bosnia’s accession to NATO’s Partnership for Peace Program, seen as the first step toward membership of the alliance. (AFP)