SKOPJE - Forensic experts in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia failed yesterday to reveal the identities of seven men shot by the country’s security forces, completing the autopsies and handing the data over to an investigative judge without comment. Police said the seven were killed Saturday while attempting to ambush a police patrol just outside of Skopje’s suburb of Butel. No members of the security forces were killed. An ethnic Albanian rebel group that calls itself the Albanian National Army or ANA accused authorities of staging the incident and executing the seven people. (AP)

ANKARA - Jalal Talabani, the leader of one of the two Kurdish factions that control northern Iraq, was due to arrive in Ankara yesterday for talks, officials said. Talabani is head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) which, together with the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), has controlled a breakaway enclave in northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. The visit comes at a time of growing tension in Iraq centered on fears that Washington may turn its military might against Saddam Hussein after toppling the Taleban in Afghanistan. Both Talabani and KDP leader Massoud Barzani have said they need to see a better alternative to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before supporting any US action to overthrow him. (Reuters)

Telephone tipsters are helping NATO track the whereabouts of Radovan Karadzic, the UN war crimes tribunal’s most wanted suspect, an alliance official said yesterday. The US State Department’s offer of a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of the former Bosnian Serb president has prompted 300 to 500 calls to the US Embassy since mid-January. Meanwhile, NATO said it was investigating allegations that a French army captain tipped off Karadzic’s inner circle about last Thursday’s arrest attempt. Alliance officials expressed skepticism over the claim. (AP)

A dusk-to-dawn curfew in the impoverished Esenler district in Istanbul’s European side will stay in place for several more days in a bid to restore calm after violent weekend street battles left one person dead, a local official said yesterday. (AFP)

Turkish prosecutors have filed charges against seven families for giving their children banned Kurdish names, a report said yesterday. Prosecutors in the town of Dicle in Diyarbakir province, in the largely Kurdish southeast, said the seven families gave 21 children Kurdish names such as Serhat, Baran, Rojda and Zelal, the daily Radikal said. In their indictment, the prosecutors said the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, used these names as code names for its members and demanded that the families rename their children, Radikal reported. (AP)