ANKARA (AP) – Turkey has sufficient natural gas to make up for a suspension of supplies from Iran, the country’s energy minister said yesterday. Iran announced Wednesday that it had cut the flow of natural gas to Turkey to meet increasing winter demand at home. “There is no problem,” Energy Minister Hilmi Guler told journalists. “Our citizens won’t freeze this winter.” Iran is Turkey’s second-largest supplier of natural gas after Russia. Turkey also imports liquefied natural gas from Nigeria and Algeria. Guler said Turkey was making up for the cut in Iranian gas with supplies from Russia and liquefied gas imports.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romanian authorities have dismantled a cross-border human-trafficking ring based in southwestern Romania that forced children to steal from cars and shops in Italy, border police said yesterday. Police said the 15-strong gang, controlled by Romanians, was the largest trafficking network broken up so far in the Black Sea state, which joined the EU on January 1. Romania is struggling to contain human trafficking and smuggling, which are endemic in the region which has now become the EU’s eastern border. The police said the children exploited by the gang were between 10 and 17. Official data indicate that about 1,400 Romanian victims of trafficking, including sexual exploitation and forced labor, were identified in the first nine months of last year. Some 200 perpetrators were arrested.

An Albanian passenger threatened to blow up a Hungarian airliner yesterday after he was prevented from getting on the wrong plane. The man flying to Tirana tried to board a Malev flight to Kiev, but when stopped, he said he would blow up the aircraft, airline spokeswoman Krisztina Nemeth said. “There was an exchange of words, and the man got aggressive and said he would set off a bomb on board,” she said. The man was arrested, both airplanes were searched and no bombs were found. (Reuters)

Serbia’s president yesterday received the credentials of the ambassador of Montenegro, the tiny Adriatic republic that declared independence from Serbia last year. President Boris Tadic met with Anka Vojvodic, a 55-year-old former judge who will represent Montenegro in the neighboring country, seven months after the formal separation of the two Balkan states which used to be part of the former Yugoslavia. “I believe that Vojvodic will contribute with her work to the further development of good, brotherly relations between Serbia and Montenegro,” said Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic. (AP)