Bulgarian authorities have detained a former Kosovo prime minister on an international arrest warrant.

A human rights watchdog said today that new evidence has emerged to warrant an investigation into claims that ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo killed Serbs and sold their organs at the end of the war in Kosovo.

APPARENTLY Ireland is going to recognise Kosovo’s independence.

Kosovo marked its first full week of independence with prayers and protests today as outraged Serbs geared up for demonstrations across Europe.

Kosovo’s leaders sent out 192 letters to the world’s nations today asking for formal recognition of its independence.

The move by Kosovo to become an “independent and democratic state” is backed by the US and key European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Kosovo’s prime minister today announced a special afternoon session of parliament where lawmakers planned to declare independence – a bold and historic bid for statehood in defiance of Serbia and Russia.

A former ethnic Albanian rebel leader elected as Kosovo’s prime minister vowed that the province was only weeks away from independence and called on Serbia to give up its claim to the territory.

A 49-year-old man who caused Dublin Airport to be evacuated last summer when he paraded around the arrivals area claiming to have a bomb and threatening to set it off because he wanted to "make a point" has been sentenced to three years by Dublin Circuit Court.

The Pentagon has released new details of allegations against three high-profile terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay in a move condemned by a defence lawyer as a tactic to inspire moral condemnation.

The death of Slobodan Milosevic abruptly and inconclusively ended his trial for war crimes in Kosovo, but he remained a predominant figure in the trial of six Serb politicians and generals that opened in The Netherlands today.

A FORMER rebel commander accused of war crimes by Belgrade was asked yesterday to head Kosovo’s new government in a move that could further strain tense ties with Serbia.

THE troubled UN-administerd province of Kosovo is facing an uncertain future following the death of President Ibrahim Rugova.

KOSOVAN President Ibrahim Rugova, linked for decades to the ethnic Albanian majority’s anti-Serb struggle, said yesterday he has lung cancer, but he pledged to stay in office as the UN-run province nears crucial talks on its future.

A UN tribunal today set January 2007 for the beginning of former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj’s war crimes trial.

Kosovo’s former prime minister, who resigned last week and surrendered to a UN tribunal, today pleaded not guilty to war crimes charges at the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

KOSOVO’S former prime minister has been charged with 37 counts of war crimes for alleged atrocities against Serbs.

Kosovo’s former prime minister has surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal a day after the ethnic Albanian resigned to face charges stemming from the province’s fight for independence from Belgrade.

KOSOVO’S ethnic Albanian prime minister resigned yesterday after being charged with war crimes by the United Nations tribunal.

A British army battalion has been send to Kosovo after the UN mission in the Serb province raised its security threat level to Stage Black.

A FORMER rebel commander who was recently was questioned by UN war crimes investigators was yesterday chosen to be prime minister of Kosovo.

Slobodan Milosevic’s defence resumed today, even as an appeals panel of the UN war crimes tribunal considered the former Yugoslav president’s request to sack his court-appointed lawyer and let him represent himself again.

Slobodan Milosevic’s court-imposed British lawyer told the UN war crimes tribunal today he will ask for a suspension of hearings until an appeals chamber has considered overturning his appointment at the request of the former Yugoslav president.

Slobodan Milosevic attacked a prosecution theory that he sought to carve out an ethnically pure “greater Serbia” in the broken Yugoslav federation, and branded the war crimes indictments against him “a sheer mutilation of justice”.

Jan Colley

US President George W Bush yesterday designated six prisoners to become the first people who could be tried before military tribunals, drawing renewed criticism from defence lawyers of the secretive special courts.

A FORMER Yugoslav Army soldier told the Slobodan Milosevic trial yesterday how he helped massacre Kosovo Albanian civilians, including a baby that “screamed unbelievably loud” after it was shot.

In fierce cross examination today, Slobodan Milosevic accused his accuser of founding a Kosovo terror group and being related to leading drug dealers.

A disagreement over weapons in Macedonia has delayed NATO’s mission to help disarm the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army.

Ethnic Albanian rebels engaged Macedonian soldiers and police in isolated skirmishes early today ending the eerie silence of the previous 24 hours.

Slavic offcers defending Macedonia’s second-largest city from ethnic Albanian rebel assaults say they will fight to the end to defend the country and its borders.

The Macedonian Army today sent tanks rumbling into the country's second-largest city, Tetovo, in response to the ethnic Albanian rebellion.

The army mounted a heavy artillery attack to push ethnic Albanian rebels northward, but the scene in Shipkovica, a hill town above Macedonia’s second-largest city, reflected a rebel force ready to stay put and step up their fight.