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• NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson told Latvian lawmakers on Thursday that their country risks missing out on alliance membership if they don’t drop a language requirement that Russians consider discriminatory. In a toughly worded speech to the Saeima parliament in Riga, he said the law which requires that candidates for elected office be able to speak Latvian does not meet NATO’s democratic standards. "NATO nations will be watching very carefully what you do this year in relation to the election laws so they conform to standards throughout NATO countries," he said during a one-day stop in the Baltic Sea coast nation. He said once countries were in NATO, there was no mechanism to expel them. "That is why the heat will be on, why you cannot afford to be in any way complacent," he said. "Every minute is going to count, every standard is going to be examined and everything you do will come under the spotlight." Parliament foreign affairs committee chairman Guntars Krasts said the law will likely be changed but urged NATO to be patient. "We must have an open, public discussion about this," he said. "Otherwise the public will think it was just a back room deal with international politicians and it will change their opinion about NATO."(AP 21028 Feb 02 GMT)

• The EU’s foreign policy chief met Thursday with leaders of Yugoslavia’s two feuding republics and said a solution to avert a final breakup of the country may include a change of its name. After shuttling for hours between Serb and Montenegrin leaders, Javier Solana suggested that abandoning the name Yugoslavia could be part of an agreement aimed at keeping the two republics together. "It is very likely that we'll have to have a different name," Solana told reporters at the end of his one-day visit here. He did not elaborate. A Yugoslav official said the union’s new name would most likely be "Union of Serbia and Montenegro." The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the suggestion is intended to appease the independence-minded leaders of the smaller republic, Montenegro. After meeting with Solana, Montenegro’s separatist leader, Milo Djukanovic, said he still had not abandoned plans to hold an independence referendum. However, he indicated he might accept EU suggestions to postpone the referendum. "The international community has no intention to deny Montenegro its right to choose its future, but we are now discussing at what moment that right (to hold a referendum) can be activated," Djukanovic said.(AP 212349 Feb 02 GMT)

• Fierce competition among rival Afghan warlords raises the prospect of renewed civil war, although probably not in the near term, a CIA analysis says. While much of the country has been fairly stable since the Taliban's fall from power, the classified report cites tensions between ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks in northern Afghanistan two groups that made up much of the northern alliance and in regions where no clear leader took power, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Civil war is not imminent but the seeds are there," a senior U.S. official said Thursday, confirming a New York Times report about the analysis. At the Pentagon on Thursday, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged that conditions in Afghanistan are troubling, and he did not rule out the possibility that the United States could decide to send tens of thousands of ground troops to "police the whole country," if necessary. Rumsfeld said numerous options are being studied, including his preferred solution of using U.S. troops to help Afghanistan build its own national army, which could provide the security needed there. "Which way is the best way, I don't know," Rumsfeld said. "Which way is the fastest way, I don't know." He said he was awaiting a report from a U.S. team that is assessing the options.(AP 11819 Feb 02 GMT)

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