Italian investigators have called on former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd to testify about charges of bribery and embezzlement. The inquiry involves NatWest Markets, "when the bank advised on a controversial deal involving Telecom Italia and the Serbian telephone network in 1997." Some charge that money paid by Telecom Italia for a stake in Telekom Serbia actually ended up in the hands of "bank accounts and front companies controlled by Slobodan Milosevic and his associates," the Observer reports. Hurd was a staunch opponent of Western intervention in Bosnia to stop Serb atrocities there and "was perceived to have been sympathetic to the Serbs during the Balkans conflict," the Observer notes. He later served as deputy chairman of NatWest during the time of the Telekom Serbia deal.

How nation building fares in Bosnia after September 11 "Even before September 11, Bosnia began to lose cachet," writes Natasha Hunter. "And as soon as the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the nation-building project in Bosnia abruptly slid to the remote reaches of international (and especially U.S.) attention. ... "... [I]f we do not allow Bosnia to be complex, to have multiple allegiances, we not only betray our own values but risk encouraging an extremism that Bosniaks once eschewed. The United States would do well, in its new role as nation builder, here and elsewhere, to take a hard look at Sarajevo."