World in brief

U.N. official: Serb fugitive is in Belgrade

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina - The U.N.'s chief war crimes prosecutor said Wednesday that the leading Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, is hiding in Belgrade, the Serbian capital.

Serbian officials immediately dismissed the assertion.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Belgium, the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said she had "received just last week information from a credible source that even Karadzic is now in Belgrade." She added that cooperation between the Serbian government and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in tracking down fugitives is "frozen."

It was the first time a senior tribunal official has said that Karadzic was in Belgrade. The former Bosnian Serb leader has been charged by the tribunal in The Hague with committing genocide and crimes against humanity during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia. But despite the presence of thousands of NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia, he has eluded arrest.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The Brazilian government has made permanent the requirement that visiting Americans be fingerprinted and photographed. It was imposed as retaliation by a judge who was offended by new U.S. immigration procedures that he characterized as Nazi-like.

While American visitors to Brazil will continue to endure the same processing that Brazilian visitors face when they enter the United States, new rules put in place Tuesday call for immediately installing electronic fingerprinting equipment and Web cameras to speed the process.

In a concession to U.S. diplomatic objections, Americans no longer will be made to stand in separate lines and laboriously processed. The new rules also permit Brazil's Federal Police, who enforce immigration laws, to waive the fingerprinting and photographing of U.S. cruise-ship passengers if Brazilian port facilities can't handle their processing.

CYPRUS TALKS: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed hope Wednesday that his talks with Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders will lead to negotiations on a plan to reunite Cyprus before it joins the European Union on May 1. Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash and Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos agreed to a third round of talks with Annan today. GREECE READIES FOR VOTE: Greece's Parliament was dissolved Wednesday to launch the campaign period for March 7 general elections - a close fight between the long-governing Socialists and their conservative challengers.

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