SARAJEVO - The NATO-led peace force said it paid a total of around $1,800 to villagers in eastern Bosnia for damage caused during its failed bid in February to snatch Bosnian-Serb genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic. SFOR said in a statement it had denied villagers’ demand for compensation, saying claims arising from combat-related activities were not valid under the 1995 Dayton peace treaty, but that it had decided to pay them voluntarily anyway. “This type of payment is known as an ex gratia payment and consists of voluntary payments to correct perceived wrongs done by SFOR,” the peace force said in a statement published at the weekend. (Reuters)

SOFIA - Most Bulgarians are categorically opposed to EU demands to close parts of an aging nuclear plant which provides more than 40 percent of the impoverished country’s power, a poll said yesterday. Seventy-eight percent of 1,022 people questioned by Gallup in early April said they disagreed with the European Union’s request for the four oldest sections of the Kozloduy nuclear plant to be shut down. Just 7 percent agreed with the move, while 70 percent said they did not believe that safety concerns had sparked EU demands to close the reactors. (AFP)

Some 5,000 demonstrators protested in Sofia on Saturday at a decision to suspend public access to communist-era secret police files, which authorities drew up on some 600,000 people before 1989. “Let us not allow the past to be buried. We are not asking for revenge, but the guilty must repent,” said Nadejda Mikhailova, leader of the anti-communist opposition United Democratic Forces. (AFP)

China and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) celebrated their recently normalized diplomatic relations with their presidents reiterating the “one China policy” and opposing an independent Taiwan, state press said yesterday. “There were once ups and downs in Sino-Macedonian relations because of sabotage by the Taiwan authorities,” Chinese President Jiang Zemin told his visiting counterpart Boris Trajkovski in a meeting in Beijing on Saturday. “But the Macedonian people have rejected and opposed their attempts,” Jiang said. (AFP)

NATO troops in Bosnia on Saturday said they had uncovered a stash of more than 4,000 mortars in a textile factory in the Muslim part of Mostar. Colonel Nicolas Rambaud, who heads the southeastern division of SFOR, said 50 tons of 120 mm mortars and 850 kilos of gunpowder had been discovered in the basement. (AFP)