PARIS (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac yesterday said the NATO military alliance should stay tightly focused on its original mission of upholding the security of Europe and North America. “To seek to commit the alliance to non-military operations, in ad hoc partnerships, technological adventures and in insufficiently prepared enlargement, could only distort its vocation,” he said in a broad foreign policy speech. The French position on NATO enlargement clashes with that of the United States, which has called for Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Albania to be admitted to the 26-member alliance.

BERLIN (AP) - Hardliners in Serbia are hindering the integration of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, the province’s UN administrator said in remarks published yesterday. Involving ethnic Serbs with Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority is among the biggest problems facing the province, Joachim Ruecker said in an interview the Handelsblatt daily. “More must be done, not only by the Kosovo Albanians, but also by the Serbian minority,” Ruecker was quoted as saying. “The hardliners in Belgrade must stop hindering the political and economic integration of Kosovo’s Serbs.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said yesterday it had sent a mission to Bosnia to observe the campaign and preparations for the October 1 general election. It will be a long-term mission, headed by Ambassador Lubomir Kopaj of Slovakia, and consists of 14 international staff based in Sarajevo and 17 long-term observers deployed around the country, the OSCE statement said. The mission will monitor to see if the general elections are in compliance with democratic electoral standards and will observe campaign activities, media coverage, the legislative framework and its implementation, the media situation, the work of the election administration as well as the resolution of election disputes. (AP)

Leading Croatian war veteran groups yesterday demanded some 4000 ethnic Serbs seeking state-funded housing be publicly identified to ensure that none were former rebels. In an open letter, Croatian generals, officers, war invalids and widows demanded that “not a single returnee who participated in aggression against Croatia be settled into a state home.” The organizations also demanded not a single Croatian made homeless after the war be left out of the process. (AP)

A firefighting helicopter crashed into a reservoir in southwestern Turkey yesterday while trying to collect water to fight a wildfire that has been raging near a Mediterranean coastal town, officials said. All five people aboard survived, forestry official Ahmet Gedikagaoglu said. The fire, in a small canyon near the resort of Kas, was largely under control but firefighting planes and helicopters were still dropping water to extinguish it. (AP)