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• Land- and sea-based planes launched air-strikes against enemy forces in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, U.S. Central Command said Sunday. Navy Cmdr. Dave Culler said the strikes were launched after coalition forces were attacked when trying to pass a roadblock at 0730 GMT Saturday. (…) Cmdr. Culler declined to be specific about the location and said the action is ongoing.(AP 180155 Feb 02)

• More than 100 peacekeepers from Turkey arrived in Kabul on Saturday, the first soldiers from a Muslim country to join the international security patrols in Kabul. (…) Turkey is deploying 267 soldiers in coming days and is willing to expand the force to 1,000 men if it can take over command of the peacekeepers in April, when the British term expires. (…) Turkish officials are worried that the mission may be too costly for the country if the West does not agree to fund the deployment. Turkish generals also are concerned that the United States might withdraw its soldiers from Afghanistan and that factional fighting could break out again. "Turkish unit leaves with problem," Turkey’s respected Cumhuriyet newspaper said in a front-page headline on Saturday. "The country has yet to receive the political and financial guarantees it is seeking," the newspaper added. (AP 161622 Feb 02)

• An advance group of Greek soldiers left for Afghanistan on Sunday, military officials said. The 49-member group, aboard a C-130 aircraft, is due to arrive at Kabul International Airport early on Tuesday after stopping in Dubai. A total of about 130 Greek soldiers, all volunteers, will eventually be deployed in Afghanistan. They will be stationed outside the Afghan capital. (AP 171828 Feb 02)

• German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar have highlighted Europe’s concern that the United States may attack Iraq in its "war on terror" and urged it not to act unilaterally. "No one has shown me any evidence yet that the terror of Osama bin Laden has anything to do with the regime in Iraq," Fischer told Der Spiegel magazine. (…) The international coalition against terror was "no carte blanche for an invasion of any country, especially not unilaterally," Fischer told the magazine according to the advance text of an interview due to be published on Monday. (…) Aznar, who holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, told Der Spiegel that the international coalition must not be allowed to split. (…) Aznar said: "We shall have to discuss the new vision of American foreign policy. We are experiencing a historic moment, in which Europeans and North Americans must redefine their alliance." (Reuters 161543 GMT Feb 02)

• CIA director George Tenet met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on Sunday, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. According to the agency, the two discussed international developments and issues of mutual interest during a meeting in the office of the crown prince. It offered no other details. Tenet arrived from Yemen and Egypt, that he visited on Saturday. (AP 171939 Feb 02)

• Military officials from 15 countries met Saturday in the Armenian capital to plan NATO exercises that are to be held in June in neighboring Georgia. About 60 NATO command officials also participated at the conference in Yerevan, said Armenian Defense Minister Seiran Shakhsuvarian. Armenia itself is to host NATO exercises in 2003 as part of the Partnership for Peace program. (…) Major General Mikhail Melkonian, chief of the Armenian armed forces’ department for international cooperation, said the country’s contacts with NATO would not get in the way of military cooperation with Russia. (AP 161135 Feb 02)

• Pressing the hunt for her court’s most wanted suspects, the chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal urged Bosnian Serb authorities on Friday to find wartime leader Radovan Karadzic. "For sure we know that Karadzic is here in Republika Srpska," Carla Del Ponte told reporters after meeting Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic. (…) Ahead of Del Ponte’s visit, her spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, urged Bosnian Serb authorities to hand over Karadzic and the Yugoslav leadership to extradite Mladic, who she said was, "in Belgrade, under the protection of the Yugoslav army." (AP 151603 Feb 02)

• Yugoslavia has asked to observe the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said on Saturday. "In my capacity as federal minister, I have addressed an official request to the tribunal and I hope the response will be positive," Svilanovic was quoted by Beta news agency as saying. He added the request, filed before the start of the trial, had not yet been answered. (Reuters 161846 GMT Feb 02)

• After months of relative calm in southern Serbia, an explosion early on Sunday destroyed pipes prepared for building a local water supply system, the government said. It denounced the incident as a "terrorist act." (…) "The terrorist act targeted the part of Bujanovac where mostly the Serb population lives ... with the aim of disrupting peace and prompting people to flee," a government statement said. It urged ethnic Albanian leaders to condemn the attack. (AP 171503 Feb 02)

• Around 1,000 Serbs met on Saturday in Gracanica to remember one of postwar Kosovo’s worst atrocities and to protest at the failure so far to bring the killers to justice in the UN-governed province. Eleven Serbs died exactly one year ago after a 200-kg bomb exploded beneath the bus in which they were traveling. UN police arrested four ethnic Albanians on suspicion of links to the attack but all are now free. (Reuters 161606 GMT Feb 02)

• Gunmen shot on Macedonian (sic) police entrenchments in the tense northwest amid fears that simmering tensions could escalate into fresh armed clashes, a government spokesman said Sunday. Late Saturday and early Sunday a group of unidentified gunmen fired on a sandbagged police checkpoint near the capital Skopje’s suburb of Aracinovo and on another police position outside the northwestern city of Tetovo, police spokesman Vasko Sutarov said. No one was injured and police did not return fire, he added. Government forces also reported small-arms and machine-gun fire from villages near Tetovo. (AP 171137 Feb 02)

• Hundreds marched through the town of Struga on Saturday, demanding the release of the six men accused of helping ethnic Albanian rebels launch an insurgency last year in Macedonia (sic). Walking in silence, about 1,000 protesters waved red and black Albanian flags as they snaked their way through the streets of this town to protest the arrest of the men and their detention for months without formal charges. (AP 161535 Feb 02)

U.S. – Russia : Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned on Sunday that the United States is "forgetting its friends" and urged Washington to keep in mind the support Russia provided in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "At that dramatic and difficult moment, President Vladimir Putin was one of the first leaders to hold out a friendly hand," the Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying. But following the anti-terrorist coalition’s successes in Afghanistan, the United States has neglected this friendship, Gorbachev added. (AP 171032 Feb 02)