Europe News

LONDON (AFP) - Most Iraqi residents of the southern city of Basra believe the presence of British troops in the region has been negative, an opinion poll for BBC television suggested Friday.

MADRID (AFP) - The armed Basque separatist group ETA claimed responsibility Friday for killing two Spanish policemen in France on December 1 and vowed to keep staging attacks, in a statement in the Basque press.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union leaders backed away Friday from offering Serbia a fast-track to membership and again cautioned Belgrade that its future entry hinges on full cooperation in handing over war crime suspects for trial.

MOSCOW - Liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky, a candidate in numerous Russian elections since the 1991 Soviet collapse, will not run for president next year, his spokeswoman said Friday.

EDINBURGH, Scotland - Shifting tactics, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that the Bush administration has decided to tone down its appeals to NATO allies for more troops and other aid in the fight against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

OSLO, Norway - When it comes to wiping out a bank account, forget holiday shopping. Just parking their cars cost some Norwegians between $37,000 and $148,000.

LONDON - A British student who was killed nearly six weeks ago in the Italian apartment she shared with an American roommate was buried Friday in a private funeral in south London,

LONDON - The number of British army soldiers testing positive for illegal drugs has increased sharply, according to research published Friday.

EDINBURGH (AFP) - NATO allies with troops on the frontline in Afghanistan agreed Friday to develop a master plan for efforts to stabilise the country over the next five years, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

LONDON - British artist Damien Hirst has donated four of his works to the Tate collection, including a replica of his prize-winning installation of bisected cows in formaldehyde, the museum said Friday.

MOSCOW - Russia's foreign minister charged Friday that Britain had been deliberately worsening relations between the two countries, prompting Moscow to shut the regional offices of a major British non-governmental organization.

LONDON - The archbishop of Canterbury said Friday he will not reverse his decision to exclude a gay U.S. bishop from joining other bishops at a global Anglican gathering next year.

LONDON - Princess Diana's letters to "Darling Dodi" were read Friday at the British inquest into the deaths of the couple, giving a glimpse of the passion of a new romance that ended in a car crash in Paris.

MINSK, Belarus - The leaders of Russia and Belarus pledged closer cooperation on military, economic and foreign policy but gave no indication Friday that the ex-Soviet neighbors were moving closer to a long-discussed full merger.

MOSCOW - A Russian opposition activist was committed to a psychiatric hospital before government protests, supporters said Friday — the latest in a series of incidents suggesting a punitive Soviet-era practice is being revived.

GENEVA - More than 200 migrants are feared to have drowned at sea in separate incidents off Yemen, Turkey and the Canary Islands so far this month, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican, which has been accused of aggressively seeking souls in Russia and some other countries, said Friday it has every right to spread its message and accept converts but that non-Catholics must never be forced to embrace the faith.

PARIS - A French appeals court on Friday ordered the extradition of a former member of Italy's Red Brigades left-wing terrorist group, a judicial official said.

LONDON - A British parliamentary committee said Friday that one or more people should have been disciplined for allowing Royal Navy sailors to sell stories to newspapers about their capture by Iran earlier this year.

BALI, Indonesia - The U.S. and Europe headed toward a compromise solution Friday at the U.N. climate conference, breaking a deadlock over how ambitious the goal should be in negotiating future cutbacks in global warming gases, the German environment minister said.

LONDON - Sanctions against Iran are still necessary despite a U.S. intelligence finding that Tehran has abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday.

ROME - The Dalai Lama said Thursday that China is taking an increasingly harsh stance on Tibet and he appealed for international help during a visit to Rome.

GENEVA - The destruction of CIA interrogation tapes supports suspicions that the agency used torture to gather information from terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, a U.N. human rights expert who recently visited the prison said Thursday.

DUBLIN, Ireland - Ireland's government announced Thursday it will organize new nonreligious primary schools in the capital, a move that reflects growing immigration and declining church power in this traditionally Roman Catholic nation.

HOHENFELS, Germany - U.S. and Russian generals, undeterred by political tensions over a proposed American missile shield in Europe, said Thursday that their joint training exercises in Germany should expand because of a common enemy: global terrorism.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A departing U.N. prosecutor appealed Thursday for the U.N. Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to keep its doors open until its chief fugitives are arrested and put on trial.

MOSCOW - Veteran diplomat Yuli Vorontsov, who served the Soviet Union and Russia as ambassador to Afghanistan and the United States in a career spanning the Cold War and the Gulf War, has died at age 78, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

LISBON, Portugal - European Union leaders signed a new treaty on Thursday that would give the 27-nation bloc a long-term president and streamline its decision-making process.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The head of the U.N. panel on climate change compared him to Hitler. Another leading scientist called him a parasite. A third described his latest book as a "stealth attack" on mankind.