SARAJEVO (AFP) – A team of DNA experts in Bosnia yesterday said it had identified its 10,000th victim from the Balkan country’s brutal inter-ethnic war. “The 10,000th missing person to be identified using (a) unique DNA-led system was a man missing from the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995,” the International Commission on Missing People (ICMP) said in a statement. DNA analysis remains the only tool to identify thousands of nameless victims exhumed from mass graves across the former Yugoslavia. There are still more than 17,500 people missing in the region, including 13,000 in Bosnia, according to ICMP figures. The commission hoped to make another “9,000 DNA matches,” the ICMP director said, adding that it hoped to carry on its work until at least 2010.

LJUBLJANA/ZAGREB (Reuters) – The prime ministers of Croatia and Slovenia won backing from their main parties yesterday to start talks to end lingering disputes over borders, fishing and property which have strained relations for 16 years. “I received full consent from all the parties in parliament today,” Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in Zagreb after briefing the parties on his talks with Slovenia’s Janez Jansa. “This showed a high degree of political responsibility even though we are in an election year,” Sanader said. Jansa, who met with Sanader at the Bled lake resort in Slovenia on Sunday, also won support from his parliament, though several nationalist parties opposed any quick deal with Croatia.

A retired Serbian physics professor has built a house using plastic bottles in the place of bricks, a local newspaper reported yesterday. Tomislav Radovanovic, who came up with the idea before becoming a pensioner, built the dwelling from around 14,000 bottles in the central town of Kragujevac, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital Belgrade. “I had the idea to build such a house while speaking to my students about alternative construction,” he told Politika newspaper. The unique building material was collected by Radovanovic and his students from litter that had been scattered around the surrounding countryside – making his project very cheap. (AFP)

Bulgarian customs officers seized 123.5 kilos (272 pounds) of heroin found in a truck, and one suspect was arrested, police said yesterday. The drugs, stored in 183 packages, were found in a Bulgarian truck crossing the border from Turkey, police said in a statement. The 36-year-old Bulgarian truck driver was arrested by border police, and an investigation was under way. (AP)