WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States assured Turkey it will continue to treat the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq as a terrorist organization, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday. “With respect to PKK-KADEK, we consider them to be terrorist organizations,” Powell told a press conference. But Powell was vague on the role of US forces in northern Iraq, controlled by the Kurds who allied themselves with the United States against the Saddam Hussein regime. “We’re still working on how to go about that in the most effective way... There are a number of very tricky issues that we have to work out,” he said Powell.

SOFIA (Reuters) - Britain said yesterday it had joined the United States in criticizing Bulgaria’s ex-king prime minister for naming a former communist spy as his security adviser just months before the country joins NATO. A diplomatic source in Sofia told Reuters that Italy and the Netherlands had also protested at the possible appointment. Last week, Washington issued a statement calling on Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg to abandon plans to appoint Brigo Asparuhov, an intelligence officer in communist times and former head of the National Intelligence Service.

Croatia looked set yesterday to extend its fishing jurisdiction to one half of the Adriatic, in a move likely to anger neighbors Italy and Slovenia and possibly slow down Zagreb’s EU membership drive. The former Yugoslav republic, which shares a maritime border with current EU president Italy, now controls only its territorial waters, roughly one third of the Adriatic, and has a liberal fishing regime with neighbors. Prime Minister Ivica Racan, whose Cabinet approved the decision to impose a “fishing and ecological” zone on the eastern half of the Adriatic late on Thursday, said the zone would help better manage fishing resources and seabed exploitation beyond the territorial waters. (Reuters)

Israel said yesterday it had agreed to buy 15 million cubic meters (530 million cubic feet) of water annually from Turkey for 20 years, but did not disclose the price it would pay in its first ever water import deal. Turkey is Israel’s closest Muslim ally and the two countries have military cooperation agreements. They have been discussing a deal on water sales for a long time and reached a tentative accord last year, but failed to agree on the price. (Reuters)

German General Holger Kammerhoff, 59, took command of the KFOR multinational peacekeeping force in Kosovo yesterday, replacing Italian General Fabio Mini. (AFP)