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ISAF

• Rockets were fired at an eastern Afghan airport used by U.S. forces on Sunday and rival commanders dug in west of Kabul as violence mounted ahead of the scheduled return from exile of ex-King Zahir Shah next week. News also emerged of rocket attacks on the governor’s office in the southern city of Kandahar, the bastion of the ultra-Islamic Taliban until they were ousted late last year. The private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted Mohammad Ebrahim, governor of the eastern province of Khost, as saying Sunday’s rockets were fired at the airport in the provincial capital of the same name, but missed. AIP did not mention whether there were any casualties in the early morning rocket attack, but quoted Ebrahim as saying tribal rivalries could be behind it. It said Ebrahim did not rule out the involvement of al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. (Reuters 141155 GMT Apr 02)

• International peacekeepers clashed with a 30-strong group of armed men in Kabul and captured some wearing the new Afghan police uniform, a spokesman for the multinational force said on Saturday in Kabul. General Deen Mohammad Joorat, the Interior Ministry security chief, said the seven men captured were members of the official security force and alleged their intention was to destabilise the interim Afghan administration. ISAF spokesman Lt-Col Neal Peckham said the 18-nation force had worried the clash might have resulted from a security operation by the interim administration and it had not been told. (Reuters 131009 GMT Apr 02)

NATO

• U.S. President George W. Bush supports the idea of a NATO-Russia summit in Italy next month, believing it would highlight Moscow’s new relationship with the Atlantic alliance and the West, the White House said on Friday. "A NATO-Russia summit, in the president’s opinion, would highlight the new relationship that has been developed between Russia and the West, between Russia and NATO as well as the United States of course," spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in Washington. After meeting NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson at the White House on Tuesday President Bush called for "even more constructive" ties between Moscow and the alliance. (Reuters 121749 GMT Apr 02)

• German Defence Minister Rudolph Scharping said on Friday the government could consider drafting women for national service, but not now. While most other European Union nations have already decided to scrap compulsory call-up for military and community service, Germany is steeped in a blazing debate over the issue ahead of federal elections in September. Scharping’s comments in Bild were provoked by Friedrich Merz, the parliamentary leader of the opposition Christian Democrats, who has proposed women do some sort of service too. He did not specify whether it should be military or community. (Reuters 121136 GMT Apr 02)

• Europe should try to bring Russia into the European Union, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Saturday in Parma. The Italian premier said Saturday that Russian membership in the EU might be considered now. "The next goal is to bring Russia in the European Union in order to make the EU a political and military power as well as an economic one," Berlusconi said at the annual congress of employers’ body Confindustria. (AP 131142 Apr 02)

BALKANS

• A former Yugoslav army commander and a war crimes suspect was quoted as saying on Sunday that he will give himself up to a UN tribunal in a dignified manner. Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic commanded the army under Yugoslav President Milosevic during the 1999 NATO airstrikes against the country. He is one of top suspects wanted by the UN court and listed by the Serbian government for extradition to the international tribunal in The Hague. Ojdanic told the Vesti daily that since a law on extraditing war crimes suspects was adopted by the Yugoslav parliament, it was his legal obligation to give himself up to the tribunal. "They can arrest me right now, but there is no need for that because I’m not escaping or hiding," Ojdanic told the daily. (AP 141047 Apr 02)

• The UN mission in Kosovo has pulled most of its civilian employees out of ethnic Serb-dominated areas in the province because of a recent escalation of violence, an official said Friday. Local Serb staff working for the UN mission and 20 international staff members did not go to work in offices in four northern towns Friday - Leposavic, Zubin Potok, Zvecan and the Serb-dominated part of Kosovska Mitrovica. Foreign members of the civilian staff were also advised not to stay overnight in the northern Serb-dominated areas, said Andrea Angeli, a spokesman for the UN mission in the province. UN police planned to remain in those areas, but were to receive reinforcement from NATO-led peacekeepers in the tense northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica, Angeli added. (AP 121932 Apr 02)

• The Russian Defense Ministry will halve the number of its peacekeepers in Kosovo, leaving 600 troops by early May, a news agency reported Friday. The Russian military contingent deployed alongside NATO-led KFOR in Kosovo numbered 3,600 when it was deployed in 1999, and has been trimmed continually to reach 1,200 now, the Interfax-Military News Agency said, citing unidentified Defense Ministry officials. A Defense Ministry spokesman couldn’t immediately confirm the report. (AP 121158 Apr 02)

• A delegation of European lawmakers, physicians and Gulf War veterans from Britain and France arrived in Baghdad on Sunday to assess the effects of 11-year-old UN sanctions as well as depleted uranium used in NATO munitions during the 1991 war, the official news agency INA reported. (AP 141816 Apr 02)

 FINAL ITEM