ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s government will take legal steps to allay army concerns over a controversial bill that allows officers to be tried in civilian courts, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said yesterday. “If there is a need for an additional arrangement, the government will include it on its agenda and send it to parliament” when lawmakers return from summer recess in October 1, Arinc said in televised remarks. President Abdullah Gul approved the law – to which the army and the opposition objected – on Wednesday. But he called on the governing Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP) to act swiftly to clarify the bill’s scope and ease the army’s concerns. The bill would pave the way for civilian courts to try military personnel in times of peace for attempts to topple the government and offenses related to national security and organized crime. It also transfers to civilian courts the power to try civilians in peacetime for offenses outlined in the military penal code.

ANKARA (AP) – A Turkish appeals court has ordered a third retrial for 21 leftist militants on charges of attempting to overthrow the state 27 years ago. The court says it overruled yesterday a lower court decision to sentence 20 of the defendants to life in prison because that court failed to request their testimony, violating their right to defend themselves. The trial began two years after a 1980 military coup and many defendants spent more than 15 years in detention awaiting trial. Twenty-one defendants will be tried again.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Two policemen were wounded yesterday in a grenade attack in a southern Serbian town near the Kosovo border, state news agency Tanjug reported. The policemen, serving with Serbia’s special police unit, were on regular patrol when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their vehicle 10 minutes after midnight yesterday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The incident occurred in the town of Lucane, near Bujanovac, the administrative center of the Presevo Valley area that has a large ethnic Albanian population. Serbia’s Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said the attack targeted “territorial integrity and the state of Serbia.” “There is no other way to describe the attack except as a terrorist one,” the Beta news agency quoted Dacic as saying.

Bucharest’s Court of Appeals yesterday overturned a Finance Ministry decision to cut bonuses for judges, saying the move was illegal, causing a problem for the government as it tries to curb spending to meet International Monetary Fund rules. Romania’s center-left government needs to reduce the public sector wage bill to ensure a group of lenders led by the IMF continues to grant cash from its 20-billion-euro aid package, secured in March. The Finance Ministry introduced a plan to scrap some of the bonuses for public employees as part of spending cuts performed under a budget revision shortly after it agreed to the IMF deal. The ministry had sought to scrap judges’ “workplace stress” bonus payments, which amount to 50 percent of net judicial salaries. (Reuters)

Turkey has renamed a street in front of the US Consulate in Istanbul “Three Martyrs Street” in honor of three policemen killed in an attack there. On July 9, 2008, gunmen stormed a guard post at the consulate, touching off a firefight that killed three police officers and three assailants. Istanbul’s governor and the US consul general joined family members at a ceremony yesterday to remember the policemen and to rename Kaplicalar Street where the attack occurred. (AP)

Nine Cypriot athletes have been diagnosed with swine flu in Teramo, northern Italy, Italian agency Ansa reported yesterday. The athletes were part of the Cyprus delegation to the Mediterranean Games which finished on Sunday in nearby Pescara. Six young athletes took ill on Wednesday, while a member of the coaching staff showed signs of symptoms in the late evening and another two young athletes fell ill yesterday morning. They are being treated at the Mazzini di Teramo Hospital. (AFP)