SKOPJE (AFP) - European lawmakers probing allegations that CIA planes secretly transported prisoners through European countries said in Skopje late on Friday that there was “no firm evidence” in the case of a German man allegedly abducted in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and transferred to Afghanistan for questioning. During a two-day visit to FYROM, five members of the European Parliament committee in charge of the probe were investigating the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin. He has accused the CIA of kidnapping him in late 2003 from FYROM and interrogating him in Afghanistan. There is “no firm evidence that el-Masri was kidnapped in Macedonia, but there is no contrary evidence also,” the EU lawmaker leading the probe, Italian Claudio Fava, told reporters.

SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry said yesterday it will open some 253,000 documents from communist-era secret archives by the end of 2006. The declassification applies mainly to historical documents and secret files from before 1991, though some archives deemed particularly sensitive will remain sealed, the ministry said in a statement. The archives of Bulgaria’s former civil and military espionage services were first opened in 1997, though it was soon discovered that some 60 percent of them had already been destroyed by the authorities in 1990. The files were sealed again in 2002 after the adoption of a NATO-required law aimed at protecting classified information. Between 1997 and 2002, 25,632 Bulgarians who had been spied on by the communist secret services were able to see their own files, ministry data showed.

A Turkish soldier was killed yesterday when he stepped on a land mine likely planted by Kurdish rebels in the country’s southeast, the Anatolia news agency said. The soldier was walking to his sentry point near the paramilitary troop headquarters in Cukurca, Hakkari province, close to the border with Iraq, when the blast occurred, the report said. Land mine attacks have become a hallmark of violence by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) since the group called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire in June 2004 and the rebels began entering Turkey from northern Iraq. (AFP)