Former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, acquitted by a U.N. court of war crimes during the 1990s Kosovo conflict, said he was detained Wednesday at Ljubljana airport on an Interpol warrant issued by Serbia.

"I was in transit, the checking of my documents was lasting for a long time and when I asked what was going on ... I was told that there was an arrest warrant that was still valid," Haradinaj told AFP over the phone.

Slovenian Defense Minister Janko Veber was forced to step down by parliament Thursday over a telecom privatization scandal that has plunged the country's seven-month-old coalition into chaos.

Veber was dismissed by 68 votes to 11 in the 90-seat parliament, just days after refusing to resign.

Slovenian police detained a 24-year-old Italian suspected of having sent envelopes containing poison to a Czech minister in November, private POP TV reported Monday.

"He was captured at a post office while attempting to send another mail (containing poison) to Czech officials," police spokesman Miran Ozebek told POP TV adding the Italian had been detained in the Nova Gorica area bordering Italy at the end of December.

A Swiss national died and 30 people were injured, two of them seriously, in a highway pile-up Sunday after heavy snow in central Slovenia, police said.

Alenka Bratusek, a Slovenian former prime minister rejected by the European parliament for an EU commissioner job she was put forward for, has backed out of the race, new commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday.

"I have a lot of respect for Alenka Bratusek's decision to resign," said Juncker, just hours after his spokesman warned that her rejection by lawmakers threatened to delay the start of the commission's five-year mandate.

A 17-year-old woman was killed and a man was missing after floods caused by heavy rains swept away a vehicle in northeast Slovenia, authorities said Saturday.

The incident happened in Vransko, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of the capital Ljubljana, where flash floods eroded a road and swept away a van with two passengers inside, police said.

Law professor Miro Cerar vowed bolster to Slovenia's shaky economy Monday as he was voted in as prime minister of the tiny Alpine country.

The political newcomer, 51, who won snap elections on July 13 despite having set up his center-left party just a month before, said he would push for jobs and growth.

Slovenian President Borut Pahor on Tuesday nominated the winner of last month's election, political newcomer Miro Cerar, as prime minister of the troubled eurozone state.

"I believe (Cerar) will carry out this demanding task conscientiously and successfully," Pahor told journalists, although the appointment still has to be approved by parliament.

Slovenians voted on Sunday in snap elections with a political novice favored to win but unlikely to restore stability in the crisis-hit eurozone country.

The vote will be the second early election in three years in the country that was once a model member of the European Union, but that has been on a downward spiral since the 2008 financial crisis. 

Jolanka Horvat has watched her home region of Pomurje, in Slovenia's northeast, slide deeper into poverty and joblessness over the past few years.

And the 53-year-old seamstress has little hope of change after Slovenia's snap election this weekend, the third in less than three years.