ISTANBUL (AFP) – Two Turkish soldiers have been charged for abuse of power as part of the probe into the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, officials and media reports said yesterday. The pair are the first members of the security forces in the northern city of Trabzon, where the murder was planned, to face charges in the case. The security forces in the Black Sea port have been accused of failing to act to prevent the murder despite having received intelligence that local ultranationalist youths were plotting to kill Dink. A prominent member of Turkey’s tiny Armenian community, Dink, 52, was gunned down outside the office of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos in Istanbul on January 19. The two soldiers risk between six months and two years in jail for abusing power, newspapers reported.

BUCHAREST (AFP) – The Simon Wiesenthal Center called yesterday for the dismissal of Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu for an alleged “proposal to deport Roma” amid tensions between Italy and Romanian Gypsies. The center urged Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu, “to publicly condemn Cioroianu for his statement, to dismiss him from the Romanian government and to apologize to the Roma community in Europe” in a letter to the premier. The letter was written by the Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, Shimon Samuels. Cioroianu said last Friday in a televised debate that during an official visit to Egypt, he had considered “buying a piece of land in the Egyptian desert to send there all the people who tarnish the country’s image.” Cioroianu later apologized publicly but refused to resign.

Serbian authorities charged a Bosnian citizen of war crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the Serbian prosecutor’s office for war crimes released in a statement yesterday. Ilija Jurisic, 64, was charged with having ordered an attack on a convoy of vehicles of the former National Yugoslav Army (JNA) as it pulled out of Bosnia under cover of a ceasefire agreed with the Bosnian authorities. The attack, in May 1992, killed 92 soldiers and wounded at least another 33, said the statement. Jurisic at the time was a member of the crisis cabinet in Tuzla, the town in northwest Bosnia where the incident occurred. He was arrested at the beginning of May at Belgrade Airport and and detained on suspicion of war crimes. (AFP)

A land mine left over from Kosovo’s war exploded in the southern part of the province, injuring four children, police said yesterday. The ethnic Albanian children were guarding their family’s sheep herd Thursday when the blast occurred between two villages near the town of Urosevac, 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of the capital, Pristina. (AP)

Serbia’s goal of achieving European Union candidate status in 2008 is ambitious but possible, the EU’s commissioner for enlargement said yesterday. The EU initialed an agreement with Serbia this week covering the reforms needed for entry to the bloc. Serbia wants to get the agreement fully signed and by the end of next year be recognized as an official EU entry candidate. “It is an extremely ambitious objective but it is still within the limits of the possible,” Olli Rehn told reporters on a visit to Estonia, when asked about the candidate status goal. (Reuters)