Serbia

Pro-democracy candidate wins presidential election

A pro-Western reformer won Serbia’s presidential run-off election Sunday, defeating a hard-line nationalist ally of former autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.

Boris Tadic received 54 percent of the vote to become Serbia’s first democratically elected president since World War II. Nationalist Tomislav Nikolic got 45 percent, the state electoral commission said. Turnout was 48 percent.

Three previous attempts to elect a Serbian president since 2002 failed because too few voters showed up. Earlier this year, parliament scrapped a 50 percent turnout requirement.

Washington, D.C.

Libya’s aid sought on Sudan relief effort

Facing resistance by Sudan’s government, the Bush administration has turned to Libya to help mount a $100 million relief operation for the starving and harassed people of Darfur in western Sudan, a White House official said Sunday.

President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said “there is probably more to come” than the $100 million already dedicated to the region where the U.S. Agency for International Development estimates 350,000 might starve by spring.

Darfur has emerged as a major humanitarian crisis because of a 16-month struggle between regional black tribesmen from the region and government-backed ethnically Arab militias. U.S. officials have called it “ethnic cleansing,” an effort to force out the desolate region’s African majority.

Gaza Strip

Missile strikes retaliate for attacks on army outpost

Israeli helicopters early today fired 10 missiles at two metal workshops in Gaza City, setting off fires, witnesses said. There was no immediate word on any casualties.

The two strikes, just minutes apart, came just hours after militants blew up an Israeli army outpost in Gaza and wounded five soldiers. Two militant groups, Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack on the outpost.

In the first air strike, three missiles hit a metal workshop in the Zeitoun neighborhood, setting off a small fire. In the second attack, several more missiles hit a metal workshop in downtown Gaza City, causing a large fire.