BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s executive body is likely to propose conditions in March for starting entry talks with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), the bloc’s enlargement chief said yesterday. “If positive progress continues, then my intention is to propose... a set of benchmarks to fulfill for the launch of accession negotiations,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said after talks with FYROM Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. He said the conditions would mainly concern reforms of the country’s administrative and judicial systems and were likely to be presented in March. “I am certain these key priorities are doable,” he said.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s chief war crimes prosecutor has received death threats for his role in trying to arrest fugitive suspects from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, his office said yesterday. “As a proven enemy of the Serbian people, you will be punished,” said a letter sent to prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic by an unidentified “Serb Group” from Chicago, which has a large Serbian immigrant community. “This is not the first time the prosecutor has had death threats,” said his spokesman Bruno Vekaric.

Belgium will send a diplomatic delegation to Bulgaria to check on conditions in orphanages after a television documentary highlighting poor treatment raised protests, the the Belgian Foreign Ministry said yesterday. The delegation will leave on a fact-finding mission Sunday and further steps will be based on their conclusions, the ministry said. It said that it had already approved 50,000 euros ($72,500) to start the project. (AP)

Some 1,000 people were evacuated from their homes in a residential area of Zagreb, Croatia, yesterday, while experts defused a 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb from World War II, police said. The unexploded bomb, lying at a depth of some 7 meters (23 feet), was the fourth of its kind discovered during excavation works at the same building site since mid-December. (AFP)