SARAJEVO (AFP) – Several dozen skeletons have been exhumed from two mass graves in Bosnia believed to contain victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, a judicial official said yesterday. Four complete and 44 incomplete skeletons were uncovered in one mass grave in the Zeleni Jadar area, 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Srebrenica, Jasna Subotic, spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office, said. The remains were found crushed and compressed – suggesting that the bodies might have been interred elsewhere, then exhumed and reburied with the use of bulldozers in a bid to conceal their fate. “The remains are so badly damaged that it is even possible that they have been reburied twice,” Subotic said.

ISTANBUL (AP) – Turk troops killed eight separatist Kurds in a clash near the Iraqi border, officials said yesterday. The fighting erupted in the town of Uludere in Sirnak province, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the border with Iraq, the governor’s office said. Earlier, Turkey’s top general asked the government in a televised speech to set guidelines for an incursion into northern Iraq.

European lawmakers yesterday approved a report accusing the CIA of having run secret prisons in Romania and Poland from 2003-2005 to interrogate terror suspects. The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly backed Swiss investigator Dick Marty’s report by 124 votes to 37, with eight abstentions. He claimed NATO and the US had reached a secret deal after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks to allow the Central Intelligence Agency to run the covert prisons. The report named Poland’s former President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Romania’s former leader Ion Iliescu and Romania’s President Traian Basescu as having authorized the program. It said they should be held accountable. (AFP)

The Albanian parliament again failed yesterday to elect a new president, with political parties insisting their candidate should be appointed, although no names were put forward. A vote last week failed because neither the governing Democratic Party nor the main opposition Socialist Party – nor any other group – had officially nominated a candidate. Current President Alfred Moisiu’s term expires July 24. Failure to elect a president could force early general elections. The Democrats have 80 seats, too few to overcome an opposition boycott. (AP)

A Russian who arrived in Romania on a bicycle and sought refugee status is being held while the authorities consider his demand, a statement from the border police said yesterday. The Russian, whose name has not been made public, arrived on an old bicycle with a backpack for his only luggage and was detained at the frontier post of Ghermanesti in northeast Romania. “His soaked clothing attracted the attention of the police who realised he spoke Russian and did not have any identity papers on him,” the border guards said. (AFP)