SKOPJE (AFP) – The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s strongest ethnic Albanian party yesterday ended a five-month boycott of parliament that had threatened to derail the country’s bid for European Union integration. The Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) had agreed to return to the assembly after its leader, Ali Ahmeti, reached a deal with Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, the two sides said in a statement. The deal included an agreement to continue “dialogue to reach a consensus needed for Euro-Atlantic integration,” said the statement. In Brussels, the European Commission welcomed the deal. “This agreement should now allow the return of DUI to the parliament and provide the political stability to concentrate on the country’s European future,” a spokeswoman on enlargement issues said.

BELGRADE (AFP) – Serbia’s chief war crimes prosecutor yesterday demanded a probe against 12 former soldiers and paramilitaries suspected of atrocities in Croatia in 1991. Police confirmed the arrest of seven of the suspects but a source close to the investigation told AFP that all 12 had already been detained. The group includes four ex-soldiers of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and eight ex-paramilitaries.

The Roman Catholic Church would like to see Turkey enter the European Union, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone told the La Stampa daily in an interview published yesterday. “Turkey is a country that is definitely secular,” Bertone said on the sidelines of a conference in Rome on “Christianity and Secularism.”(AFP)

Turkish authorities seized weapons hidden among construction materials on a Syria-bound train from Iran after Kurdish guerrillas bombed and derailed the train, a prosecutor said yesterday.(AP)