BUCHAREST (AP) - President Traian Basescu flew to Washington yesterday to discuss military bases the US will set up in Romania. Basescu, speaking before he left, said he would also discuss with President George W. Bush and other officials an oil pipeline from Central Asia to Europe that will cross the Black Sea. “The main topic is evaluating the military bases to be built in Romania,” Basescu said. He will meet Bush today. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu in December signed a 10-year agreement to set up four military bases.

BELGRADE (AP) - The US envoy for Kosovo status talks said yesterday that he was optimistic that a solution can be found for the troubled province at ongoing UN-brokered talks. US diplomat Frank Wisner urged the Serb and ethnic Albanian delegations in the negotiations to be flexible. “Both the Serbian side and the Kosovo Albanian side should look toward future negotiations, be flexible and work toward a compromise in order to be able to reach a realistic solution,” Wisner said at the end of his visit to Belgrade. Wisner described the top-level meeting in Vienna as an “historic event... of tremendous importance for all of us who seek a solution for the future of Kosovo.”

A Turkish court upheld a ruling that rejected a request to retry imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, officials said yesterday. Ocalan, who led the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, demanded a retrial in late February but his request was rejected in May. Another court on Tuesday upheld that decision, saying recent amendments in the penal code would not benefit Ocalan. The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that Ocalan had not received a fair and independent trial and said reopening his case would be “an appropriate way of redressing the violation.” (AP)

The US envoy on war crimes was expected in Serbia yesterday amid pledges by the Belgrade government that it will step up efforts to capture war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic. Clint Williamson, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, is to meet Serbian President Boris Tadic, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and other officials during his two-day visit, the US Embassy said in a statement. Williamson’s meetings in Belgrade will focus on Serbia’s cooperation with the UN court in The Hague, Netherlands, and government efforts to solve the 1999 wartime murder of three Americans slain by Serb paramilitaries near Kosovo, the embassy said. (AP)

Albania has granted asylum to five Chinese Uighur Muslims released from the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, a government official said yesterday. The asylum requests by the Uighurs, who were resettled in Albania after being released from the detention camp in Cuba in May, had been approved earlier this month, an Interior Ministry source who requested anonymity told AFP. (AFP)