WASHINGTON (AP) - Slav-Macedonian Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, meeting with US President George W. Bush, said the two leaders agreed FYROM is a success story, building a stable, multiethnic democracy in the Balkans. Buckovski said he told Bush FYROM was proud to have its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Buckovski said he expressed “the gratitude of the people of Macedonia for US recognition of our constitutional name, the Republic of Macedonia.” The name is a sore point with NATO ally Greece, which believes it implies territorial ambitions for the northern Greek province of Macedonia.

BELGRADE (AP) - Lawmakers in the joint Serbia-Montenegro assembly debated a much criticized agreement yesterday allowing NATO troops free transit across the Balkan country. The agreement, signed in July, has been blasted by hardliners who still consider NATO an enemy since its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. “Shameful: NATO license to kill Serbs,” read a headline yesterday in the Glas Javnosti daily, claiming that NATO soldiers may “shoot, kill or harm citizens of Serbia” without any legal consequences. Socialist lawmaker Branko Ruzic said that “over 55 percent of citizens in Serbia oppose this agreement ... It should be tested in a referendum.”

Serbia-Montenegro’s new defense minister, in comments published yesterday, called on top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic to surrender, or take his own life. “I would tell Mladic this: ‘Surrender and face the charges or, if you believe you are guilty, then pass the judgment on yourself,’” Zoran Stankovic told the NIN weekly, reiterating his earlier suggestion that the wartime Bosnian-Serb commander should commit suicide. (AP)

Career diplomat Ross Wilson is being nominated as the next US ambassador to Turkey, the White House announced Thursday. (AP)