SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgarian troops belonging to the US-led multinational force in Iraq have permanently left the country, Bulgarian Defense Minister Vesselin Bliznakov said yesterday. “The last 130 troops of the Bulgarian contingent are since last night safe in Kuwait,” said the minister, at a memorial service for five soldiers killed two years ago in an attack on the Bulgarian base, in the Shi‘ite town of Kerbala, south of Baghdad. Bulgaria has counted 19 deaths — 13 military and six civilian — since the beginning of the operation in 2003.

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Talks over compensation payments between Bulgarian officials and Libyan families of HIV positive children allegedly infected by Bulgarian nurses are to resume on January 15, an official said yesterday. The executive director of the Kadhafy Foundation, Salah Abdessalam, told AFP that fresh talks would begin on January 15 after a delay was called “for psychological reasons.” An official source said that the talks, originally set to resume today, were postponed after a court ordered a retrial for the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had been sentenced to death for allegedly causing the infections.

A village in southeastern Romania was quarantined yesterday after five chickens there tested positive for an H5 variant of bird flu, the head of the country’s National Animal Health Agency said. The virus was first detected late Friday in quick tests in the village of Albesti, some 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, east of Bucharest, a sign that the virus was turning up west of the Danube Delta, where the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus was first confirmed in October. (AP)

Some 1,000 Serbs took to the streets of Mitrovica yesterday, voicing their anger after two Serbs were shot and wounded in the ethnically divided town in Kosovo on Monday. “The latest attacks show that ethnic cleansing is happening,” shouted protesters at the demonstration in the center of the mainly Serb-populated northern part of the town. “If UNMIK (the UN mission in Kosovo) cannot guarantee our security, there is only solution left — the return of Serbian military and police” to the province of Kosovo, they said. (AFP)

A heavy snowstorm in Romania yesterday wiped out power in seven southwestern communities and prompted a flood warning from the country’s environment minister. A dozen electric transformer stations were damaged by the storm’s strong 100 kilometer (62 mile) per hour winds, national radio reported. (AFP)