SARAJEVO (Reuters) - The United States said yesterday Serbia may not have to hand four indicted generals over to the Hague tribunal if it delivers top fugitive General Ratko Mladic, contradicting the UN court's own prosecutors. US war crimes envoy Pierre-Richard Prosper said «there was no deal made» to this effect as Serbia has claimed, but he made clear it was not «impossible,» as UN war crimes chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte insisted in Kosovo last week. «What was understood (was that) if they catch Mladic, then it creates a whole new environment that allows for transferring cases back home,» Prosper told reporters in Sarajevo after a meeting with Bosnia's peace overseer, Paddy Ashdown.

TEHRAN (AFP) - An official from Iran's national gas company has said the Islamic republic is considering the renegotiation of a contract with Turkey, backing down from an earlier threat to sue if an existing export deal is not respected, the official news agency IRNA reported. The head of the company, Roknoddin Javadi, told IRNA an examination of the contract would only be made within the framework of the current deal's time period, saying that such talks were part and parcel of long-term contracts. On Saturday, Director General of the National Iranian Gas Co. (NIGC) Mohammad Melaki warned that Ankara cannot renege on the long-term contract «on the pretext that the prices were too high.»

Serbian special police are ready to join American forces fighting guerrillas in Afghanistan, less than five years after NATO's US-led bombing of Yugoslavia, their commander said yesterday. Police General Goran Radosavljevic said he and his men, whose experience and training match US requirements, could set off immediately once Serbia and Montenegro's Parliament approves the plan. (Reuters)

Thousands of students demonstrated for a second day in Romania yesterday to demand that the government give them more money in grants and that dorms charge less. Some 15,000 university students in the northeastern city of Iasi protested for a second day yesterday, while about 6,000 students in the western city of Timisoara took to the streets for the first day. (AP)

Left and center-left parties led by the ruling coalition's Social Democrats will win a slim majority in Croatia's general elections set for November 23, an opinion poll showed yesterday. Six parties, including four from the ruling coalition, will win 72 out of 140 seats in Parliament, the poll published by the Nacional weekly showed. The rightist bloc, grouped around the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), will win 68 seats, according to the poll of some 3,000 people. The HDZ would remain the strongest single party with 58 seats, or 20 more than Prime Minister Ivica Racan's Social Democratic Party. (AFP)