SOFIA (AFP) – Heavy snowfall and strong winds caused havoc on roads across Bulgaria yesterday, road officials and rescue services said. Snowstorms completely cut off access to three small municipalities near Varna on the Black Sea, prompting local authorities to declare a state of emergency for a second time this year, the rescue services said. Heavy winds and snowdrifts left dozens of villages in the northeastern region of Dobrich without electricity. A major road linking the capital Sofia to the northern city of Ruse and the country’s only bridge over the Danube to Romania were intermittently closed and traffic on two major highways between Sofia and the Black Sea cities of Varna and Burgas was also brought to a standstill. The mountainous Zlatograd-Xanthi border crossing with Greece was also shut. Traffic in the capital Sofia has been severely disrupted since the snowfall began early Monday, with commuters complaining it can take them as long as five hours to travel from the outer neighborhoods into the city center.

RIYADH (AFP) – Turkey said yesterday that Ankara is not ready to send its ambassador back to Washington after a US Congress panel branded the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. “As long as the situation does not get any clearer we will not send back our ambassador to Washington,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking to journalists in Riyadh. “America should not let go of a strategic ally like Turkey over such an issue,” he added, describing the the US House Foreign Affairs Committee’s decision as “a comedy stunt.” An infuriated Turkey recalled its ambassador Namik Tan on Thursday, shortly after the panel narrowly approved the nonbinding resolution, which now opens the door for a vote at a House of Representatives plenary session. In a bid to limit the fallout of the committee’s decision, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday the administration would “work very hard” to stop the resolution from going before the full house.

ISTANBUL (AP) – A security officer guarding the Ukrainian Consulate in Istanbul yesterday shot and injured an armed man who claimed to be carrying a bomb, Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said. Guler said the man, a Turk, tried to enter the building because of a personal grievance concerning his wife in Ukraine and that it was not a terrorist attack. The man was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, Guler said. Istanbul Police Chief Huseyin Capkin said the guard opened fire after the man – identified as 29-year-old Volkan Ozbudak – resisted being searched, reached out for his gun and began shooting. Guler said bomb squads were called to examine a package the man was carrying. “There is no political motive, it is not a terrorist event,” Guler said.

Bosnia’s main Muslim party yesterday launched a petition demanding the release of former Bosnian leader Ejup Ganic, who was arrested in Britain over war crimes allegations, the SRNA news agency reported. The Party of Democratic Action (SDA), that started to collect signatures (photo: Reuters) for Ganic’s release throughout the country, is due to hand the petition to British Ambassador to Bosnia Michael Tatham tomorrow, the report said. Ganic was arrested last week at London Heathrow Airport on a warrant issued by Serbia which wanted him for the killing of 18 soldiers and officers in an attack on a Yugoslav army convoy in May 1992. Ganic was a member of the Bosnian presidency at the time. District judge Nicholas Evans told Ganic yesterday that his request for bail would be considered tomorrow at London’s High Court, after lawyers appealed to have him freed while British courts decide whether he should be extradited to Serbia. (AFP/AP)

Romania is to declassify the last secret documents in criminal cases stemming from the 1989 revolution that overthrew the communist regime, the government said yesterday. “The Romanian government has decided to declassify the last documents stamped ‘State secret,’ ‘strictly secret’ or ‘secret’ from the 1989 revolution case,” an official press release said. Between the start of the uprising on December 15, 1989, and the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu on Christmas Day, 1,104 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured, according to official figures. Two decades on, prosecutors are still investigating two cases involving a total of 48 deaths and 150 injuries. “We are making an important step to make the 1989 revolution case more transparent as far as the role of the state authorities is concerned,” Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc said in the press release. (AFP)