ISTANBUL (AFP) - A prosecutor has demanded a heavy prison sentence for a member of Turkey’s wealthy Uzan family, already a fugitive from justice, on charges of wire-tapping several phone lines, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. Hakan Uzan, wanted in connection with a massive bank fraud case involving several members of his family, is accused of tapping phone lines belonging to his ex-wife, to the Turkish media mogul Aydin Dogan, and to the editor of one of Dogan’s best-selling newspapers, the report said. Uzan is the owner of a rival tabloid newspaper Star. If found guilty, he and an assistant could face up to 18 years imprisonment. Turkish judicial authorities have issued an arrest warrant in absentia for Hakan Uzan and his father, Kemal Uzan, the patriarch of what is one of the richest families in Turkey.

VIENNA (AFP) - Two ministers in Austria’s conservative government have suggested that their country finance the building of a prison in Romania — a state one of them described as “a source of crime” — so that Romanians convicted of offenses in Austria could serve out their sentences in their homeland. “I think that this is an idea worth discussing,” said Interior Minister Ernst Strasser in an interview published yesterday in the daily newspaper Die Presse. “Romania as a country is a source of crime,” he added.

Special prayers were held in mosques throughout Bosnia yesterday and clerics urged the faithful to donate aid for the victims of last week’s devastating Iranian earthquake. “It is good that a natural catastrophe can unite the good will of people, who sometimes cannot stand the happiness of one another,” Mustafa Ceric, head of Bosnia’s Islamic community, said in his sermon yesterday. (AFP)

New, stricter laws on funding political parties have taken effect in Serbia as of Jan. 1, banning financing from abroad, the Tanjug news agency reported yesterday. According to the rules recently approved by Parliament, all parties must in future draw their money mainly from membership fees and Serbia’s fiscal budget. Since funding by the Serbian state is limited to parties represented in Parliament, smaller political groups without domestic donors may disappear. Political parties will also have to account for how they spend their funds to the state election commission. (AP)

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin is to travel to the site of last week’s devastating earthquake in southeast Iran today, while Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has postponed his planned visit there, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. “Gul is obliged to make his visit at a later date, because his (Iranian) counterpart (Kamal Kharazi) will not be in Tehran at the planned time,” the spokesman said yesterday. (AFP)