ISTANBUL (AP) - Lawyers for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have filed charges against two newspapers and a politician who said the premier was being evasive about disclosing his personal wealth, the accused politician said yesterday. Erdogan spokesman Akif Beki said he was not aware of the charges, but that the prime minister’s lawyers were authorized to open cases without permission if Erdogan were illegally insulted. The private wealth of the prime minister, who swept into office on an anti-corruption campaign, has been front-page news in Turkey for a week. The Hurriyet newspaper on Monday cited court documents showing that Erdogan was worth around $330,000 (273,000 euros) in 2001, but figures widely printed in the Turkish press claim that figure is now around $1.8 million (1.49 million euros).

SOFIA (AP) - Bulgaria will send 120 non-combat troops to Iraq, the government decided yesterday. The troops will be tasked with guarding the Ashraf refugee camp, Defense Minister Veselin Bliznakov told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. The unit is due to be deployed to Iraq by mid-March. “With this decision, Bulgaria again confirms its serious political will to help the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq and give its contribution in the fight against terrorism,” Bliznakov said.

A Bosnian-Serb war crimes suspect whose wife was killed in a shootout with EU soldiers during his arrest in January is to go free on a legal technicality, Bosnia’s state court said yesterday. For the moment, Dragomir Abazovic is still in a hospital because he shot himself in the head during the operation, in which his 11-year-old son was also wounded, allegedly while firing back at EUFOR troops along with his mother. The court said Abazovic was arrested on a old warrant that was no longer valid because Bosnia had since established its own war crimes court and relevant legislation. (Reuters)

A recent European Commission proposal to boost free trade in the Balkans is not aimed at creating a new Yugoslavia, the plan’s chief said here yesterday. “It is a clear language which has nothing to do with recreating of some political existence of the past,” said Erhard Busek, special coordinator of a multinational organization tasked with fostering regional cooperation. (AFP)

A record number of tourists visited Croatia for the second year running in 2005, the statistics bureau said yesterday, thanks mostly to Westerners flocking to the country’s Adriatic coast. The number of visitors to the small arc-shaped former Yugoslav republic almost breached the 10-million mark in 2005, up 6.3 percent from the record figure of the previous year, said the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. (AFP)