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BELGRADE (AFP) – Serbia submitted a resolution to the United Nations Wednesday which, in an apparent concession to international pressure, called for new negotiations on Kosovo but did not insist on status talks.

Belgrade wants the UN General Assembly to call on both sides “to find mutually acceptable solutions for all outstanding issues through peaceful dialogue in the interest of peace, security and cooperation in the region.”

The draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, makes no mention of reopening talks on the status of Kosovo, which Belgrade had previously insisted on.

Serbia had insisted that it would not hold talks on any outstanding practical issues, as the EU and the US have called for, if the question of status was not dealt with.

Pristina however quickly condemned the Serbian proposal as a confrontational move that “does not contribute to dialogue”.

“This is a political game pursued for the (Serbian) public in order to show that the battle (for Kosovo) is continuing,” Kosovo’s deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuci’s told AFP by phone.

“It also aims at misleading the international community.”

According to some observers, Pristina believes that by insisting on talks on “all outstanding issues” instead of just technical issues as Kosovo would like, Belgrade is trying to sneak in status talks through the backdoor.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, a move that Belgrade refuses to recognise as it still considers the territory its southern province.

However, the draft that Belgrade wants adopted asks the general assembly to take “into account the fact that unilateral secession cannot be an acceptable way to solve territorial issues”.

The resolution was submitted following last week’s non-binding opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Pristina’s declaration of independence did not violate international law.

It was drafted “after consultations with a wide circle of international factors, including all permanent members of the UN Security Council,” the foreign ministry said in the statement.

Political analyst Predrag Simic told B92 radio that the draft resolution showed that Belgrade had received “the message from Brussels… that status talks were not possible any more after such an outcome at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).”

The text showed “a political realism of Belgrade emerging from the position recently announced by President (Boris) Tadic that Serbia does not want a confrontation with the big powers,” Simic, a political science professor and Serbia’s former ambassador to France, added.

One diplomatic source in Belgrade however said the draft resolution was “not enough” to satisfy the international community and the text had been drafted without consultation with other interested parties.

According to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the text has “ambiguous formulations that show that (the Serbs) want to raise the issue of status.

“The western powers do not want a wording that will allow Serbia to reopen the discussion on status,” the diplomat added.

Sixty-nine countries, including the United States and 22 out of 27 member states of the European Union, have so far recognised the majority ethnic Albanian Kosovo as an independent state.

Kosovo had been under UN administration since a NATO air campaign against Serbia ended the 1998-99 war between Serb forces and separatist Kosovo Albanians. Some 13,000 people mostly ethnic Albanians lost their lives in the conflict.

MOSCOW – Russia and the United States have uncovered a cocaine trade scheme involving a high-profile Russian impresario eager to set up business in Moscow’s expensive night clubs, Russia’s top drugs control officer said Monday.

Russians sprang into action after U.S. officials tipped them off about a 30-year-old Moscow man looking to buy cocaine wholesale in the United States, Viktor Ivanov, head of the Russian anti-narcotics agency, told reporters.

The announcement comes less than a week after a Russian pilot was arrested in Liberia on suspicion of smuggling South American cocaine into the U.S. and extradited to New York, drawing Moscow’s condemnation for the arrest.

Russian officials arrested the man and his three accomplices Thursday when they allegedly received a 10 kilogram cocaine shipment in St. Petersburg.

Ivanov refused to identify the buyer, citing the ongoing investigation, but said the man organized concerts of Russian and foreign music stars and was looking to use his network of contacts to set up a drugs trade business catering for high-profile Moscow clients.

The impresario worked with three accomplices, including a former police officer and his wife.

The man allegedly planned to import 100 kilogram (220 pound) shipments of cocaine through St. Petersburg on a regular basis and sell the drugs in Moscow’s expensive night clubs that he and his business contacts frequented.

The operation to track down and catch the drug traders red-handed took nearly six months.

Cocaine imports in Russia have been increasing by 25 percent each year in the past three years, Ivanov said.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle praised the operation as “clear evidence of the new spirit of cooperation between Russia and the United States in the war on drugs”.

Russia’s drugs czar, meanwhile, urged the U.S. to step up efforts in battling drug production in Afghanistan.

“Heroin dominates the Russian drugs market, that’s why this is a vital issue for us,” Ivanov said. “The survival of Russian society is at stake.”

Cheap and abundant Afghan heroin has fueled a surge in addiction rates in Russia, and injection drug use has been a key factor in the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There are about 2 million opium and heroin addicts and another 3 million people who use other drugs in Russia, according to official estimates. Each year, 30,000 die of drug overdoses.

Beyrle said he understood “the harm that the flow of Afghan heroin inflicts on Russian youths” but pressed for a more comprehensive approach such as tracking down traffickers and their financiers rather than just burning opium fields.

“The large-scale eradication of crops is not delivering the results we would like to see,” he said, adding that there was a significant increase last year in the amount of opium eradicated.

Afghanistan provides more than 90 percent of the heroin consumed in the world, and the bulk of it flows through ex-Soviet Central Asia and Russia.

KAMPALA (AFP) – Uganda’s president urged African Union leaders at a summit here Sunday to “sweep the terrorists” out of Africa, following recent deadly attacks by Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels.

“Let us now act in concert and sweep them out of Africa,” Yoweri Museveni said, referring to the perpetrators of the July 11 blasts in Kampala that killed 76 revellers watching the football World Cup final.

“Let them go back to Asia or the Middle East where I understand some come from,” he said at the opening of the three-day summit.

More than 30 heads of state from the AU’s 53 members gathered amid unprecedented security in the Ugandan capital, with a debate on boosting the organisation’s troops levels in Somalia and crushing the Islamist insurgents in the war-torn nation top of the agenda.

The AU summit observed two minutes of silence for the victims of the attacks two weeks ago.

“The African Union stands with you, my brother President Museveni, and with the people of Uganda,” Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s president and current chairman of the AU, said in his opening remarks.

Museveni also said many of those behind the Kampala attacks have been arrested and “interrogations have yielded very good information.”

Ugandan authorities have not been precise regarding the number of people detained for their suspected involvement in the blasts. Last week police chief Kale Kayihura put the figure at more than 20 but many of them have since been released.

The two bombings were meant to bully Uganda into pulling out of the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the last thing standing between the Shebab and total power.

Uganda reacted by saying it could send 2,000 more troops and urged more decisive international support, while the embattled Somali government argued the attacks were evidence Somalia required the world’s attention.

AU chief Jean Ping said Friday Guinea was ready to send troops to Somalia.

“We are going to quickly top the 8,000 mark… I think the current trend could take us over 10,000.”

Angola, Mozambique and South Africa may also pledge troops, whose current deployment consists of just over 6,000 Ugandans and Burundians, according to diplomats.

Ping also reiterated that the African Union was seeking a tougher mandate for AMISOM under the United Nations Charter’s chapter seven, allowing it to take more aggressive action.

“If this request is answered positively, our troops will attack,” he said.

The Shebab leadership has proclaimed its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and the group’s first bomb attacks outside Somalia renewed fears that the Horn of Africa country could become a new safe haven for Al Qaeda.

Troops from the United States and the United Nations have previously not been able to crush the insurgency in Somalia, which has been without an effective government for two decades.

Eritrea, which is under international sanctions and has been accused of supporting the Shebab, argues that the Islamist insurgency needs to be engaged at the negotiating table than on the battlefield.

The Shebab, as well as Mogadishu residents and rights groups, have criticised AMISOM for causing civilian deaths by shelling targets in densely-populated areas.

Analysts have warned a beefed up AMISOM mandate could make things worse.

“We are quite worried about the consequences of such an operation, because if they are engaged in quite an indiscriminate manner, they run the risk of playing in the hands of the Shebab,” said the International Crisis Group’s Ernst Jan Hogendoorn.

The continent’s leaders are also expected to discuss the future of Sudan, where the oil-rich south is due to hold a referendum on independence in January.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir stayed clear of the summit, AU sources told AFP. The International Criminal Court recently added genocide charges to Bashir’s indictment over the war in Darfur and Uganda, a member of the court, would have been compelled to arrest him.

The pan-African body reiterated its objections to the arrest warrant against Bashir.

“To subject a sovereign head of state to a warrant of arrest is undermining African solidarity and African peace and security that we fought for for so many years,” Mutharika said.

GONESSE, France – Families whose loved ones died in the fiery crash of a supersonic Concorde jet 10 years ago joined together near Paris on Sunday, laying flowers at a monument to the dead and wandering the breezy field where the plane went down.

A French court is awaiting a verdict on who was to blame for the accident, which killed 109 aboard the plane and four on the ground, and devastated the reputation of the jet. The Concorde, which ferried the rich and famous across the Atlantic for three decades and could fly twice as fast as the speed of sound, was taken out of service in 2003.

Some 100 family members, witnesses of the crash and Air France officials attended ceremonies Sunday marking 10 years since the plane crashed after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport, plowing into a hotel in the Paris suburb of Gonesse.

Air France flew in family members from Germany, where most of the victims were from, and gave them flowers to place at a monument in Gonesse. The Concorde program was operated jointly by Air France and British Airways.

One couple clenched hands as they looked at the monument, made of transparent glass with a piece of an airplane wing jutting through it. Families lay the flowers in silence, though officials spoke briefly at the ceremony.

Afterward, relatives of the dead went behind the monument, wandering the field where the plane crashed and where the hotel compound once stood. Claudine Le Gouadec traveled to Gonesse to pay tribute to her sister, Virginie, chief flight attendant on the doomed plane.

“I still have trouble believing that she is gone. It still seems abstract to me. The loss. For me she still exists, but I don’t see her,” she said.

Patrick Tesse recalled watching the accident unfold from his hotel nearby.

“I was in my office with the windows wide open. The noise of plane’s reactor made me look up and when I saw the Concorde, it was in flames, it was moving back and forth violently,” he said.

“I said to myself, ‘That’s it. I’m going die.’”

After a decade of investigation, a French court held a trial earlier this year in which Houston-based Continental and two of its employees are accused of manslaughter in the crash. The verdict is expected in December.

The trial focused on investigators’ reports that a Continental jet dropped a metal strip onto the runway before the Concorde took off. The prosecution says the debris gashed one of the Concorde’s tires, sending pieces of rubber into the fuel tanks and sparking a fire.

Continental denies any responsibility, saying fire broke out on the Concorde before the plane reached the debris on the runway.

The prosecution also accuses three French officials of underestimating trouble spots on the Concorde itself, and they are also charged with manslaughter.

The trial’s main goal is to assign responsibility, as most of the victims’ families received settlements years ago.

The town of Gonesse organized a separate ceremony Sunday, where some residents expressed their fears that this could happen again.

“I don’t want call it an obsession, because we are so used to hearing the noise” of airplanes, said resident Claude Philippe, 72. “But sometimes where there is a weird sound, we say to ourselves ‘Here it is, this one is for us.’”

NOVOZAVIDOVO, Russia – People in this Russian town used to stare at Jean Gregoire Sagbo because they had never seen a black man. Now they say they see in him something equally rare — an honest politician.

Sagbo last month became the first black to be elected to office in Russia.

In a country where racism is entrenched and often violent, Sagbo’s election as one of Novozavidovo’s 10 municipal councilors is a milestone. But among the town’s 10,000 people, the 48-year-old from the West African country of Benin is viewed simply a Russian who cares about his hometown.

He promises to revive the impoverished, garbage-strewn town where he has lived for 21 years and raised a family. His plans include reducing rampant drug addiction, cleaning up a polluted lake and delivering heating to homes.

“Novozavidovo is dying,” Sagbo said in an interview in the ramshackle municipal building. “This is my home, my town. We can’t live like this.”

“His skin is black but he is Russian inside,” said Vyacheslav Arakelov, the mayor. “The way he cares about this place, only a Russian can care.”

Sagbo isn’t the first black in Russian politics. Another West African, Joaquin Crima of Guinea-Bissau, ran for head of a southern Russian district a year ago but was heavily defeated.

Crima was dubbed by the media “Russia’s Obama.” Now they’ve shifted the title to Sagbo, much to his annoyance

“My name is not Obama. It’s sensationalism,” he said. “He is black and I am black, but it’s a totally different situation.”

Inspired by communist ideology, Sagbo came to Soviet Russia in 1982 to study economics in Moscow. There he met his wife, a Novozavidovo native. He moved to the town about 100 kilometers (65 miles) north of Moscow in 1989 to be close to his in-laws.

Today he is a father of two, and negotiates real estate sales for a Moscow conglomerate. His council job is unpaid.

Sagbo says neither he nor his wife wanted him to get into politics, viewing it as a dirty, dangerous business, but the town council and residents persuaded him to run for office.

They already knew him as a man of strong civic impulse. He had cleaned the entrance to his apartment building, planted flowers and spent his own money on street improvements. Ten years ago he organized volunteers and started what became an annual day of collecting garbage.

He said he feels no racism in the town. “I am one of them. I am home here,” Sagbo said.

He felt that during his first year in the town, when his 4-year-old son Maxim came home in tears, saying a teenage boy spat at him. Sagbo ran outside in a rage, demanding that the spitter explain himself. Women sitting nearby also berated the teenager. Then the whole street joined in.

Russia’s black population hasn’t been officially counted but some studies estimate about 40,000 “Afro-Russians.” Many are attracted by universities that are less costly than in the West. Scores of them suffer racially motivated attacks every year — 49 in Moscow alone in 2009, according to the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy Task Force on Racial Violence and Harassment, an advocacy group.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Novozavidovo’s industries were rapidly privatized, leaving it in financial ruin.

High unemployment, corruption, alcoholism and pollution blight what was once an idyllic town, just a short distance from the Zavidovo National Park, where Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev take nature retreats.

Denis Voronin, a 33-year-old engineer in Novozavidovo, said Sagbo was the town’s first politician to get elected fairly, without resorting to buying votes

“Previous politicians were all criminals,” he said.

A former administration head — the equivalent of mayor in rural Russia — was shot to death by unknown assailants two years ago.

The post is now held by Arakelov, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who says he also wants to clean up corruption. He says money used to constantly disappear from the town budget and is being investigated by tax police.

Residents say they pay providers for heat and hot water, but because of ineffective monitoring by the municipality they don’t get much of either. The toilet in the municipal building is a room with a hole in the floor.

As a councilor, Sagbo has already scored some successes. He mobilized residents to collect money and turn dilapidated lots between buildings into colorful playgrounds with new swings and painted fences.

As he strolled around his neighborhood everyone greeted him and he responded in his fluent, French-African-accented Russian. Boys waved to Sagbo, who had promised them a soccer field.

Sitting in the newly painted playground with her son, Irina Danilenko said it was the only improvement she has seen in the five years she has lived here.

“We don’t care about his race,” said Danilenko, 31. “We consider him one of us.”

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The United Nations’ highest court ruled Thursday that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was legal, dealing a blow to Serbia, which vowed never to accept its former province as a separate state and warned the ruling could embolden separatist movements around the world.

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci hailed the ruling as a “historic victory” and “the best possible answer for the entire world,” while Foreign Minister, Skender Hyseni, said outside the International Court of Justice: “my message to the government of Serbia is ‘Come and talk to us.’”

A tiny patch of the Balkans with a population of 2 million, Kosovo declared independence in February 2008 after years of fruitless talks with Belgrade about its desire to break away.

Issuing the nonbinding advisory opinion, International Court of Justice President Hisashi Owada said international law contains “no … prohibition of declarations of independence” and therefore Kosovo’s declaration “did not violate general international law.”

In the capital, Pristina, ethnic Albanians honked their horns and waved Kosovo and U.S. flags to celebrate the ruling.

“What happened today is the greatest joy for Kosovo since the declaration of independence,” said ethnic Albanian Shpresa Gosalci. “It is something that has sealed our status forever.”

Kosovo’s independence has been accepted by 69 countries so far. U.N. diplomats say they expect the court’s decision to spur recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. After more than 100 countries grant such recognition — more than half the 192 U.N. member states — a senior Western diplomat said it will in effect have achieved “full statehood.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will forward the advisory opinion to the General Assembly “which had requested the court’s advice and which will determine how to proceed on this matter,” U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

“The secretary-general strongly encourages the parties to engage in a constructive dialogue,” Nesirky told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. “The secretary-general urges all sides to avoid any steps that could be seen as provocative and derail the dialogue.”

Serbia’s diplomatic campaign to prevent recognition of Kosovo has left the fledgling nation in limbo and cut off from international organizations and European Union membership. Serbia’s stance is likely also hampering Kosovo’s attempts to join the EU, as the bloc insists member states have friendly relations with their neighbors.

In a statement, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said the future of Serbia and Kosovo lies in the EU.

“Good neighborly relations, regional cooperation and dialogue are the foundations on which the EU is built,” Ashton said. “The EU is therefore ready to facilitate a process of dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade.”

Kosovo had been under international administration for nearly a decade following a bloody 1998-99 war with Serbia, and thousands of NATO troops are still stationed there guarding a tense peace. Some 90 percent of the population is ethnic Albanian; the rest are mostly Serbs.

Serbia argues that Kosovo has been the cradle of its civilization and national identity since 1389, when a Christian army led by Serbian Prince Lazar lost an epic battle to invading Ottoman forces.

“Serbia has its history, Serbia has its roots, Serbia has its faith and they are all related to our policy in Kosovo,” Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said.

Serbian President Boris Tadic said Serbia will propose to the U.N. General Assembly in September a resolution on Kosovo that will represent a “compromise” between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.

“The only sustainable solution is one accepted by all sides,” Tadic said.

The United States called the ruling “a judgment we support,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “Now it is time for Europe to unite behind a common future.”

Jeremic warned, however, that the ruling could encourage separatist movements elsewhere around the world who would now be “tempted to write declarations of independence.”

“We will never recognize the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence,” Jeremic told reporters on the steps of the court’s Peace Palace headquarters in The Hague.

“Difficult times are ahead … but it is crucial that our people don’t react to any possible provocations,” Jeremic said, amid fears that angered ultranationalists in Serbia and Kosovo might become violent. Ultranationalists set the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade on fire when Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

Serbia’s ultranationalist Radical Party said the court had “gravely violated” international law, and called on the government to demand an urgent session of the U.N. Security Council to end the EU peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

And in Kosovo’s divided northern city of Mitrovica, Kosovo Serb Tihomir Markovic called the ruling shameful.

“Justice is on our side, God is on our side,” he said. “After this it will be hard for us — the Serbs in Kosovo.”

NATO-led troops increased their presence Thursday in the Serb-controlled part of Mitrovica.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the ruling would not affect the role of the 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR.

“KFOR will continue to implement its mandate to maintain a safe and secure environment in an impartial manner throughout Kosovo, for the benefit of all communities, majority and minority alike,” he said.