EASTERN EUROPE

MILOSEVIC AIDES CONVICTED

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro – Slobodan Milosevic’s paramilitary commander, his secret police chief, and five others were convicted and sentenced yesterday for the 2000 killing of a former Serbian president who was Milosevic’s political rival.

The Special Court in Belgrade sentenced the former paramilitary commander, Milorad Lukovic, to the maximum 40 years in prison for the murder of former President Stambolic and for a failed attempt to assassinate an opposition leader at the time and now Serbia-Montenegro’s foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic.

The secret service chief under Milosevic, Rade Markovic, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Five other hitmen were handed sentences ranging from 15 to 40 years in the high-profile trial that lasted more than a year. All already are serving prison terms for separate convictions.

Stambolic, Serbia’s leader until Milosevic displaced him as president in 1988, was kidnapped in August 2000 while jogging in Belgrade. He was taken to a forest in northern Serbia, killed with a shot to the back of the head, and then dumped in a shallow, lime-covered pit, chief Judge Dragoljub Albijanic said.

The judge said Milosevic ordered Stambolic and Draskovic killed because he believed they threatened his grip on power. The order came just months before Milosevic was ousted in a popular revolt in October 2000.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

NORTH KOREA CALLS ON AMERICA TO REVIVE NUCLEAR TALKS

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea yesterday said it won’t give up nuclear weapons without receiving anything in exchange and called on America to agree at revived arms talks to peacefully coexist with the communist state.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s president, Roh Moo-hyun, told a visiting former secretary of state, Colin Powell, that Washington’s moves will be the deciding factor in resolving the latest nuclear standoff with North Korea that began in 2002.

“The United States still has the final key to the six-party talks,” Mr. Roh said yesterday, according to a pool report.

The North said last week it would end its 13-month boycott of disarmament negotiations after being assured by an American envoy that Washington respects Pyongyang’s sovereignty. The six-nation talks set to reconvene next week in Beijing also include China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea.

Pyongyang claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons and has since demanded that arms talks be turned into discussions that also address the alleged presence of American nuclear weapons on the peninsula – something America and South Korea have denied.

– Associated Press

MIDDLE EAST

MUSLIM MILITANTS TO BE FREED IN LEBANON

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Lawmakers approved motions yesterday to pardon a notorious anti-Syrian warlord serving a life term for killing a prime minister and to free nearly three dozen Muslim militants, some with alleged links to Al Qaeda.

The former leader of the Christian Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, has been linked with some of Lebanon’s most notorious civil war-era killings, including the 1987 bombing of a military helicopter that killed a former pro-Syrian prime minister, Rashid Karami, and the slaying of Danny Chamoun, a prominent Christian politician.

Parliament voted to pardon Mr. Geagea, who has been jailed since 1994, apparently in the spirit of national reconciliation following the withdrawal of the Syrian army and the end of Syrian domination of Lebanon.

“This national unanimity that happened today indicates the Lebanese people’s will to turn the page of the war once and for all and to head toward the future,” Mr. Geagea’s wife, Setrida, said outside parliament after the legislature’s first session since last month’s elections that swept an anti-Syrian alliance into power.

It could be a week before the former warlord is freed, after which he is expected to travel abroad to undergo medical checkups, his wife said.

About 100 lawmakers voted for the amnesty motions, while about 15 legislators of the pro-Syria militant group Hezbollah and their allies walked out when lawmakers began debating Mr. Geagea’s case.

Hezbollah legislator Mohammed Raad said the legislators left because of the case’s political sensitivity, referring to the family of the slain Karami who refuse to forgive Mr. Geagea.

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

AL QAEDA SUSPECT HELD IN GERMANY FREED

BERLIN – An Al Qaeda suspect was freed yesterday after the country’s high court blocked his extradition to Spain, ruling that a European Union-wide arrest warrant – heralded as a key step in the fight against terrorism – does not yet comply with German law.

The ruling comes as European governments are scrambling to enact legislation following the deadly bombings in London. It also deals a blow to the European Union’s post-September 11, 2001, counterterrorism plans and highlights the difficulties Europe faces in rushing through anti-terror laws frowned upon by the courts and at times angrily contested by civil libertarians.

The Karlsruhe-based Federal Constitutional Court released Mamoun Darkazanli, who has German and Syrian citizenship, after deciding that Germany’s version of the European arrest warrant introduced last August violates the country’s constitution and a suspect’s basic rights.

Mr. Darkazanli is among 41 suspects, including Osama bin Laden, indicted by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating Al Qaeda’s terror network. He faces up to 12 years in a Spanish prison if convicted of membership in a terrorist organization.

Mr. Darkazanli, 46, appears in a 1999 wedding video with two of the three September 11, 2001 suicide pilots – Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah – who lived and studied in Hamburg along with lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.

America has labeled Mr. Darkazanli’s Hamburg-based trading company a front for terrorism. He appeared on American suspect lists after September 11, 2001, but has denied any links to Mr. bin Laden or the attacks.

– Associated Press

TREASURES FROM POMPEII UNVEILED

ROME – Decorated cups and fine silver platters were once again polished and on display yesterday as archaeologists unveiled an ancient Roman dining set that lay hidden for two millennia in the volcanic ash of Pompeii.

In 2000, archaeologists found a wicker basket containing the silverware in the ruins of a thermal bath near the remains of the Roman city, the head of Pompeii’s archaeological office, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, said.

The basket was filled with the volcanic ash that buried the city when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79. When experts X-rayed it, they saw the objects preserved in the ash.

Experts have spent the last five years extracting and restoring the 20 pieces of silver that were left behind by their owners as they fled the eruption, Mr. Guzzo said as he presented the treasure to authorities and the press in Rome.

The pieces will go on display in 2006 at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 18 miles north of Pompeii, he said.

– Associated Press

SPAIN HOLDS FIRST GAY MARRIAGE CEREMONY

MADRID, Spain – The groom wore white. The other groom wore orange.

After 30 years together, Carlos Baturin and Emilio Menendez tied the knot last week in a suburban Madrid city hall, becoming the first Spaniards to avail themselves of one of the world’s most liberal laws sanctioning homosexual marriage.

The new rules have put Spanish authorities into bitter conflict with the Roman Catholic Church and revived angry rhetorical ghosts from Spain’s civil war, when the church backed dictator Francisco Franco and homosexuality was a crime. The church has branded the law, a pet project of Prime Minister Zapatero, as nothing less than an unprecedented threat to Christian civilization. When the socialist-dominated parliament approved gay marriage this spring, a senior cardinal at the Vatican called on Spanish officials to refuse to enact the law.

And so, amid the furor, Messrs. Baturin and Menendez said their vows before a suburban alderman from the United Left Party, witnessed by a dozen of the couple’s closest friends and relatives.

“It is a testimony to who we are and what we are,” Mr. Baturin, a psychiatrist, said. “Now we are more official. We both believe in marriage and family, and we wanted to be part of that.”

Mr. Menendez’s 88-year-old mother, Marina, gave the couple an Adriatic cruise as a wedding gift. She attended the ceremony and was reported to be in excellent spirits and proud of her son, for whom growing up gay in Franco’s Spain was not easy.

– Los Angeles Times