ANKARA (AFP) - The Turkish army has deployed 1,357 soldiers in northern Iraq to fight Kurdish separatists, according to Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul. Gonul, in answer to parliamentary questions Thursday, said the Turkish troops were there mainly to pursue the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party. Turkish officers in the area also liaise with US troops in Kirkuk, Mosul and Tall Afar, the minister added. Meanwhile, a Turkish military plane has crashed in northwest Turkey, killing two pilots, the military said yesterday. The F-16 disappeared Thursday on a training flight near the Black Sea city of Karabuk, about 215 kilometers (135 miles) north of the capital, Ankara.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Croatia has floated a new diplomatic gambit to salvage its dwindling prospects of opening EU entry talks this month without handing over a top war crimes suspect, EU diplomats said yesterday. They said Zagreb had told friendly EU countries that in return for starting talks on March 17, Croatia would invite an EU mission to check that the government was doing all it could to track down fugitive general Ante Gotovina. But a diplomat from a country sympathetic to Croatia said, “I don’t think any such idea will fly because they could have got him if they had tried.”

EU troops in Bosnia said yesterday they had rounded up a significant amount of weapons and explosives by going door to door in Sarajevo and asking citizens to give them up voluntarily. In two weeks EU troops took in a total of 3,700 hand grenades, 618 small arms, 155 grenade launchers, 17 anti-tank rockets, 32.5 kilograms of explosives and 242,398 pieces of various ammunition, EUFOR spokesman Jean-Philippe Camous said. (AP)

The International Atomic Energy Agency supports Bulgaria’s plans for a second nuclear power plant, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said in a statement yesterday. It said IAEA Director-General “Mohamed ElBaradei expressed the agency’s support for Bulgaria’s plans to build a new NPP (nuclear power plant) at Belene (in northern Bulgaria), during a meeting yesterday in Vienna with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy.” (AFP)

Turkey said yesterday it no longer needed a $1 billion (763-million-euro) grant from the US aimed at cushioning its economy from the impact of the Iraq war. The statement by Turkey’s Treasury followed an announcement this week by the US House Appropriations Committee that the money, approved after the 2003 war and convertible to $8.5 billion (6.5 billion euros) in loans, would be withdrawn because there was no indication Turkey would use it. (AP)