BUCHAREST (AP) - Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu yesterday proposed withdrawing Romania’s 890 troops from Iraq due to security concerns and the cost of the operation. “The death and serious injury of Romanian soldiers is becoming a concern,” said Tariceanu, in an announcement that took many by surprise. He said he had informed President Traian Basescu of his decision and would also tell Washington. Defense Minister Teodor Atanasiu will formally submit a request to the country’s top defense body, which has the power to decide on the withdrawal.

BELGRADE (AP) - Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica summoned the country’s security chiefs to a meeting yesterday to explain their failure to capture war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic. Government officials said the Cabinet meeting would launch a plan to arrest the wartime Bosnian-Serb army commander who has been on the run since UN prosecutors indicted him in 1995 for war crimes. The plan calls for closer cooperation with US, British and other Western intelligence agencies to capture the fugitive general.

A nationalist Turkish lawyer said yesterday that he has petitioned prosecutors to bring an Armenian religious leader to trial for “insulting Turkishness.” Karekin II, whose official title is Catholicos of All Armenians, made a visit to the Greek Orthodox leader in Istanbul last week. While calling for improved relations between the two countries, he repeated Armenia’s long-held view that the Turks committed genocide against Armenians. Lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz asked an Istanbul prosecutor to bring charges against Karekin. (AP)

The UN war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia will today hand down its verdict on Naser Oric, the former Muslim commander of Srebrenica seen as a hero to many Bosnian Muslims but despised by Bosnian Serbs. Oric, 39, is on trial in The Hague for atrocities committed against Serbs during Bosnia’s bloody 1992-1995 war. He was the commander of the Muslim forces in Srebrenica, a town remembered for the horrific 1995 massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslims by Serb troops. Oric, however, is accused of crimes which took place in 1992 and 1993, before the slaughter. (AFP)

The US donated equipment to Albania’s anti-terrorism and organized crime units yesterday, the US Embassy in Tirana said. The donation comprised 10 vehicles, six motorbikes, 55 bulletproof vests, computers and laptops, printers and a fax machine. (AP)