NICOSIA (AP) – The leaders of Cyprus’s divided Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot communities will hold their first meeting in more than a year today to seek ways of restarting stalled peace talks. President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed in July 2006 to launch talks intended to pave the way to comprehensive negotiations on reunification. But the deal was never implemented. Both leaders voiced goodwill ahead of the meeting, to be held at the official residence in Nicosia of Michael Moller, the UN secretary general’s special representative on Cyprus.

ANKARA (AFP) – A Turkish prosecutor yesterday launched a probe against a Kurdish mayor who reportedly accused the government of discriminating against his administration and said he was ready for “war.” The investigation could result in official charges against Osman Baydemir, the mayor of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, the report said. The probe was launched a day after Baydemir accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of not giving financial support to his projects because he was a member of the main Kurdish party in the country, the Democratic Society Party (DTP). “The city has been discriminated against because its mayor is from the DTP,” Baydemir was quoted by the Turkish media as saying. “If the prime minister and his ministers are declaring war on Diyarbakir, I say: ‘Let us have it.’ We are not scared of fighting,” he reportedly said.

Romania’s ruling liberal party (PNL) struggled to boost its popular support in August, winning the backing of only 12 percent of the electorate, an opinion poll ran by pollster IMAS showed yesterday. The PNL and its coalition partner, the ethnic Hungarian UDMR party, command only 20 percent of votes in parliament, following months of bickering among main political groups in Romania that led to splits in the ruling coalition. The survey showed 42 percent of Romanians would vote for the opposition Democrat party (PD), linked to President Traian Basescu, down from 50 percent in an IMAS survey in June and slightly up from a July survey of pollster CURS which showed a 40 percent support. Romania’s main opposition party, the Social Democrats (PSD), garnered 17 percent of the electoral support, down from 21 percent in a CURS survey in July. (Reuters)