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SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnia war crimes court opened on Wednesday a trial against four Bosnian Serbs charged with crimes against humanity over killings, beating and rapes at two detention camps for Muslim and Croats early in the 1992-95. Prosecutor David Schwendiman said Zeljko Mejakic, Momcilo Gruban, Dusan Knezevic and Dragan Fustar were charged for atrocities committed at the notorious Omarska and Keraterm detention camps in western Bosnia. "The four took part in a widespread and systematic attack in the area around the town of Prijedor where 7,000 non-Serb civilians were detained, tortured and many of them killed on the basis...

Renee Crays hunched forward in the rear seat of her pickup. One hand clutched the headrest of the seat before her so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The Mackinac Bridge's vertical suspension cables flowed past her window as the truck climbed the gentle slope toward the center span on a recent sunny, beautiful day. Gulls soared about the bridge towers. A freighter lumbered in the distance. But Crays showed no interest in the panoramic view. She didn't glance out the side windows at all, only straight ahead, tense. "I'm scared to death of this bridge," she said. "It makes...

The first Islamist terrorist plot against New York's World Trade Centre was carried out on 26 February 1993 with a car bomb under one of the twin towers. It killed six people but failed in its aim of bringing the whole building down. To achieve that, another plot was hatched. Meanwhile, British and American foreign policy was focused not on the Islamic world, but on the unstable transition of former communist countries to democracy. Twice during the Nineties, Nato launched military interventions in the Balkans, both aimed at protecting Muslim populations in Bosnia and Kosovo. What Middle East policy there...

(AP) — EDITOR'S NOTE: An AP reporting team has been embedded with U.S. soldiers for nearly two weeks in Kandahar and Helmand provinces as part of Operation Mount Thrust. The troops are now positioned on an isolated hilltop. BAGHRAN VALLEY, Afghanistan (AP) — By night, the troops brace for Taliban mortar attacks. By day, they carry heavy gear and weapons over rocky ledges in scorching heat, stopping only to rehydrate, sometimes with the help of intravenous drips. Life with the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan is a battle not only against a stealthy and stubborn enemy but...

Secretary Condoleezza Rice Washington, DC June 13, 2006 The United States has formally recognized the Republic of Montenegro as a sovereign and independent state, following the request of its government and consistent with the provisions of the Constitutional Charter which established the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. This Charter explicitly provided means by which the people of Montenegro could express their will with respect to independence. We congratulate the people of Montenegro for the peaceful and democratic manner in which they conducted their May 21 vote on independence. The honor of being counted among the free and independent states...

VIENNA, Austria — Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Haditha. America's problems with Iraq are casting a long shadow over President Bush's meeting with European Union leaders this week. The gathering is restricted to U.S. officials and the European Union leadership, and the agenda focuses on Iran's nuclear ambitions, agricultural subsidies and the West's dependence on imported oil and gas. But the United States' precarious world standing will be the unspoken theme of Wednesday's session in Vienna. Ahead of the visit, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said he doubted Bush would have much to say about the U.S. prison for terror suspects at...

NOVI SAD -- Bojan Pajtiæ said that the new Serbian constitution must guarantee autonomy for Vojvodina. Pajtiæ, President of the Vojvodina Executive Council, said that the region must receive clear guarantees for a functional autonomy within the charter of the next Serbian constitution. “Vojvodina must have guarantees for a legislative government, as well as the right to its own budget and properties.” Pajtiæ said at a two-day conference regarding regionalism and the models for Vojvodina’s autonomy, held by the Vojvodina Parliament. “Serbia cannot adopt a European constitution if it continues to ignore the demands of the Vojvodina citizens. We are...

The bloody collapse of Yugoslavia shamed Europe. But those of us who live in the Balkans know particularly well that dismantling that artificial state involved a series of murderous ethnic and religious wars and cost at least 100,000 lives, while hundreds of thousands had to flee their homes. This is not to mention the physical devastation. Such appalling and widespread massacres and ethnic cleansing Europe had not seen since the defeat of Nazism. There is, however, one positive story from those dreadful years. It involves my own small but fiercely proud multi-ethnic country, Montenegro, which was wiped off the map...

West Point hockey coach Brian Riley sends out dozens of recruiting letters, and usually ends up changing about eight lives. In fall 1998, Derek Hines got his letter. When he read it, he was probably sitting at the kitchen table in his family's cozy home near the cemetery in Newburyport, Mass., a little town by the sea. Out back on the lawn was the regulation hockey goal that Hines had dinged with a million shots off the post. Hines had never really considered the military as a career, and it certainly hadn't occurred to him that playing a lot of...

ROME -- The center-left candidate to become Italy's next prime minister said Monday that he would pull out Italy's 2,600 troops from Iraq "as soon as possible" if his coalition wins general elections this month. "When we go to the government we'll decide for a speedy pullout of the troops, in secure conditions, talking with the Iraqi authorities so not to create situations of risk or danger -- which means as soon as possible," said Prodi. Prodi's platform says his government would immediately discuss the withdrawal, but this was the first time that he has given a sense of the...

Text of report by "E.B." entitled "Serbian drug barons are big players in Europe" published by Serbian newspaper Blic on 27 March Belgrade: Serbian drug barons, who maintain strong ties with cocaine traders in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of this narcotic, have strong business contacts also with the Albanian mafia, police information indicates. These good contacts on both sides of the Atlantic and highly functional trafficking routes, whereby tons of cocaine are smuggled from South America to Europe, have enabled them to take a place among the most powerful drugs traffickers in Europe. People have only recently become aware...

LONDON: Germans are the most intelligent people in Europe, well ahead of the British (in eighth place) and the French (15th), according to a new study by Northern Ireland’s University of Ulster, The Times reported Monday. With an average intelligence quotient (IQ) of 107, a scintilla of brainpower above the Dutch who also scored 107, the Polish (106), the Swedish (104) and the Italians (102). They all came out better in the intelligence stakes than the British who rated an even 100 IQ according to the study, ahead of the Spanish (98) and the French (94) who could only comfort...

`Fire Millen' march also know as the "Millen Man March" or the "Million Fan March" or the "Angry Fan March" If it's going to make you feel better, go for it. If you think marching down the street, chanting, burning tickets or wearing a "Fire Millen" T-shirt is going to make you feel better, knock yourself out. But know this: You're wasting your time, energy and breath. Detroit Lions president Matt Millen isn't going anywhere. Now, before we continue, it must be established that there's only one person on the planet who really knows how secure Millen is in his...

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - A Serbian court, in a landmark verdict, found 14 former members of a Serb militia guilty of war crimes Monday and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from five to 20 years for the execution of 200 Croat prisoners of war in 1991. Eight of the defendants, sentenced for one of the worst massacres of PoWs during the 1990s Balkan wars, received the maximum 20 years in jail. The rest were given prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years, including the only woman among the defendants, who was given a nine-year prison term. Two of...

The words still turn stomachs 20 years later: "No survivors." Malinda Parris was preparing to welcome her husband home for the holidays from a mission in Egypt when she first heard them. She had decorated the house, baked wildly to fill the kitchen with his favorite foods and was dressing to go to a homecoming ceremony at Fort Campbell. All that stopped when the television flashed with news that would change her life. A plane carrying her husband, Rudy, an Army pilot, and 247 other soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division home from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai had...

Montenegrin premier tells Serbia to drop its "mythomanic" policy Text of report by Montenegrin TV on 26 November [Presenter] Montenegro supports international community's decision to begin the process of defining Kosovo's final status, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic has told Pink TV, adding that it was time for Serbia to give up irrational policy imposed by nationalists. On the eve of [Slovene President] Janez Drnovsek's visit to Montenegro, the prime minister said that the Slovene president was welcome. [Reporter] Assessing that it was about time to solve the status of Kosovo and that a further postponing would not be productive, Prime...

Debunking The Myth Of The Underprivileged Soldier By Tim Kane and James Jay Carafano, USA Today They all volunteered. The U.S. soldiers pitching in with hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast and those fighting and dying in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere decided, on their own, to serve their nation. Or was the decision made so freely? Could it be that unscrupulous Pentagon recruiters duped them, taking advantage of their poverty, their lack of education and the bleak futures they share as members of the USA's urban underclass? That's the view of some critics, such as New York Times columnist Bob...

The San Francisco Chronicle featured this photograph on its front page in order to convey a positive message about the rally -- that politically aware teenagers were inspired to show up and rally for peace, sporting the message, "People of Color say 'No to War!'"

Troops Assisted Patrol Officers By Rene Romo, Journal Southern Bureau COLUMBUS - The U.S. Army's monthlong mission to assist Border Patrol agents has paid off by helping deter traffic in New Mexico's busiest corridor for illegal crossings, Border Patrol officials said Tuesday. Hundreds of soldiers from the Army's 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, out of Fort Lewis, Wash., have been performing round-the-clock reconnaissance missions along N.M. 9 between Columbus and Hachita in support of swamped Border Patrol agents. The soldiers, stationed at observation posts and using armored Stryker vehicles equipped with long-range surveillance equipment, locate illegal immigrants or drug mules...

A former Serb soldier admitted at a trial Tuesday that he and other paramilitaries had executed about 200 Croat prisoners of war at a pig farm in 1991. Ivan Atanasijevic's testimony was the first open admission of the slaughter by one of the 16 defendants at the landmark war crimes trial in a special court in Belgrade. Since the trial started in December 2003, only a protected Serb witness has admitted taking part in one of the worst massacres of POWs during the brutal Balkan wars in the 1990s. During the fighting in late 1991, the Serb-controlled Yugoslav army advanced...