German said one official last week is the biggest language group in Europe

"German", said one official last week, "is the biggest language group in Europe with around 92 million speakers This situation is impossible. They have also stirred up one of the oldest and bitterest disputes among EU states and raised questions about how the institutions will cope with the language demands of enlargement to the East.The row pits a newly assertive Germany against a smaller, but stubborn opponent in Finland. Its plans to offer only three languages - English, French and Finnish - at four of its informal ministerial meetings have already produced one boycott by German and Austrian industry ministers. As a result Michael Naumann, Germany's Culture Minister, has withdrawn from the event, which was timed to coincide with the world-renowned Savonlinna opera festival. Weeks after President Martti Artisaari helped to broker peace in the Balkans, Finland finds itself at the heart of a simmering linguistic war. After discussions in Bonn last Thursday, Finland, which has just assumed the presidency of the EU, refused to offer full German translation facilities at this weekend's informal meeting of culture ministers. For the second time in a month Germany intends to boycott a gathering of EU ministers in a ferocious battle over the status of the German language.

WHEN EUROPE'S culture ministers assemble at an opera festival this weekend, one seat will be conspicuously vacant. "But when we look at them, we see Serbs."t Two members of the Kosovo Liberation Army shot dead by British peace- keeping soldiers on 2 July, during celebrations of Kosovo's rebellion against Serb rule, were buried yesterday.. Whether this will dilute Albanian animosity remains to be seen. "They say that they come here as peace-keepers," says Mr Dermaku.

There were shootings at the weekend and a Serb man was taken to hospital with gunshot wounds.The plan is that soldiers of the two militaries - Russian and American - will patrol together, and that exclusively Russian operations will be avoided. "Russians, Americans - we make no difference between them," one old Serb woman said. "We welcome anyone who is human."The situation in the area is tense, and there is real peace-keeping work to be done. The prospect of Kalashnikov-bearing Orthodox Slav soldiers brought thousands of demonstrators out onto the streets of Orahovac last week; there are rumours of a protest in Kamenica todayThe Albanians are alarmed by reports that Russian mercenaries fought with Serb paramilitaries during the Nato bombing campaign. KLA officers say they have seen Russian identity cards on the bodies of dead paramilitaries."That's the biggest reason the Russian forces are not welcome," says Mr Arifi. "They make us think there might be more conflict."Even local Serbs do not appear particularly excited by the Russian arrivals.