PRISTINA (AFP) – Nine people – one Montenegrin and eight Turks – have been arrested in Kosovo on suspicion of human trafficking, police said yesterday. The group was arrested on Wednesday in western Kosovo while trying to illegally cross the border between the UN-run province and Montenegro, police said in a statement. All were transferred to a detention center in the capital Pristina pending trial, it added.

BERLIN (AP) – Serbia is hopeful that it can sign a pre-entry deal with the European Union at the end of the month, the country’s foreign minister said yesterday, insisting that Belgrade has already fulfilled the EU’s conditions. Slovenia, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said earlier this week that it favors a quick signing of the so-called Stabilization and Association Agreement – possibly in the next few weeks. “We very much hope this (signing) is going to become the reality come January 28, and if not January 28 at the next earliest opportunity,” Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said after meeting German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

President Traian Basescu urged Romania’s prime minister yesterday to appoint a credibly “moral” candidate to head the Justice Ministry, after refusing to consider his first nominee. Basescu said the country’s judiciary was still plagued by corruption, noting more than 4,000 official complaints about court cases last year, relating from delays to alleged miscarriages of justice. He estimated 5 percent of Romanian judges were corrupt. “They have to be removed from the system,” he said. (AP)

The defense minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia met his Afghan counterpart yesterday during a three-day visit to discuss military cooperation and meet FYROM troops under NATO command, the Defense Ministry said. Lazar Kitanovski met Afghan General Abdul Rahim Wardak in Kabul, the ministry said in a statement. “They discussed the security situation and future cooperations of Macedonia to the Afghan army,” it added. (AFP)

Bulgaria’s president said yesterday he would not pardon a British soccer fan serving a 10-year jail term for the attempted murder of a bartender at a Black Sea resort. Michael Shields was convicted in July 2005 of smashing a rock over the head of Martin Georgiev during a street brawl in the Golden Sands resort. Shields is serving out his sentence in a British prison. (AFP)