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AFGHANISTAN

• Swept into a more permanent office by an overwhelming margin, Hamid Karzai welcomed his selection as Afghanistan’s president. "I think everyone is happier," said Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan. "It’s not going to provide food or houses, but it’s a start," he added. On Friday, the grand council begins the more arduous task of cobbling together the rest of the government. (AP 140229 Jun 02)

• The Pentagon said Thursday that it routinely transmits unencrypted video images via commercial satellites but it was confident that NATO forces were never harmed by anyone picking up unclassified data feeds. "The U.S. military does not send or transmit classified information by unsecure means," said Cheryl Irwin, a Defense Department spokeswoman. When classified information is involved, it is safeguarded from "unintended access," she added. The spokeswoman was responding to reports that virtually anyone could tune in live to U.S. spy plane transmissions over the Balkans routed through a Telstar satellite over Brazil. Irwin said the United States was confident that no video had been used in a way harmful to forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization despite a report that viewers had been able to watch a security alert around the U.S. Army’s headquarters at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. In London, a British satellite enthusiast, John Locker, said he had spent the last seven months alerting NATO and U.S. military commanders to the free availability of pictures from manned spy planes and drones but was always told: "So what?" (Reuters 131725 GMT Jun 02)

NMD

• An interceptor rocket fired from a Navy ship in the Pacific slammed into a dummy warhead in space on Thursday in a success for a troubled part of the U.S. missile defense program. The exercise showed a rocket guided by a warship’s radar system can knock down a medium- or long-range missile under controlled conditions. Pentagon officials said the test wasn’t meant to be realistic but would help gather data to guide further development of ship-based anti-missile systems. (AP 140217 Jun 02)

• Slobodan Milosevic battled in court with NATO’s former military commander, Gen. Naumann, a four-star German general who accused him of planning to murder ethnic Albanians in Kosovo months before conflict erupted in 1999. The testimony by Gen. Klaus Naumann was the most direct evidence heard yet by the UN war crimes tribunal linking Milosevic with an allegedly premeditated campaign to wipe out or drive out the ethnic Albanian population from Kosovo. Gen. Naumann said that in 1998-99, he met three times with Milosevic to negotiate a withdrawal from Kosovo of Yugoslav forces blamed for atrocities. Milosevic agreed to reduce the military and police presence in Kosovo, but when he failed to keep his promise, NATO had no choice but to intervene, he said. Gen. Naumann said that, during a meeting in Belgrade at the presidential White Palace in October 1998, Milosevic told him and NATO’s European military commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, that the Serbs had a "solution" for the ethnic problems in the region. Asked what that solution was, Milosevic referred to the killing of Albanians in Kosovo after World War II, when "we got them together and we shot them." (AP 140156 Jun 02)

• NATO-led peacekeepers on Thursday arrested a Bosnian Serb man secretly indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for the massacre of more than 200 people in 1992. NATO said the arrest of Darko Mrdja, who allegedly headed a special police unit which carried out the massacre, should serve as a warning to other fugitives, in particular Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. "You have only two choices: turn yourself in with dignity or justice will be brought to you," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in a statement. "The net is closing," he added. (Reuters 131747 GMT Jun 02)

• Dutch premier Wim Kok on Thursday paid his respects to the thousands of victims of Srebrenica, the Bosnian massacre which eventually brought down his own government. Dutch leaders have said their relatively small and lightly armed contingent was powerless to prevent the massacre but have acknowledged the wartime peace mission in Bosnia was flawed. Asked what he felt at the site of the massacre, caretaker premier Kok replied: "First of all emotions, of course strong emotions, for what happened seven years ago." He has, however, insisted that Bosnians should blame the Serbs and not the Dutch for the massacre and his spokesman has made clear he is not in Bosnia to offer apologies. (Reuters 131833 GMT Jun 02)

OTHER NEWS

• The Dutch foreign minister was outraged, but other members of Parliament poked fun on Thursday at U.S. legislation that authorized President Bush to use "all means necessary" to free Americans detained for trial by a new international war crimes court. Often referred to here as The Invasion of The Hague Act, the legislation approved last week by the Senate prompted tongue-in-cheek headlines in the weekend newspapers warning of a looming military confrontation with the United States. Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen told parliament the U.S. government had assured the Netherlands it cannot think of a situation in which it would launch a military action. (AP 131844 Jun 02)

• With the International Criminal Court due to start next March, defense lawyers gathered to Montreal on Thursday to chart their own role alongside those accused of war crimes. About 350 lawyers from around the world got to work creating an International Criminal Bar Association that eventually will help to ensure accused people get fair trials, in fact as well as in theory. The results of the lawyers’ efforts from the three-day meeting ending on Saturday will be submitted to the law commission of the United Nations. (AP 131842 Jun 02)

• Uzbekistan has decided to pull out of a strategic alliance of five former Soviet republics, a Foreign Ministry official said Thursday, underlining the Central Asian nation’s international confidence after becoming a prominent partner in the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan formally notified embassies on Wednesday of the other members of the group known as GUUAM - the first letters of member countries, which also include Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova - that it was leaving the organization, Uzbek Deputy Foreign Minister Sadyk Safayev said. The Uzbek Foreign Ministry note said Tashkent was pulling out because it saw no progress on the tasks set by the organization. (AP 131731 Jun 02)

 FINAL ITEM