ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey, which the EU says must improve its treatment of its 25-million-strong Kurdish population before it can join the bloc, and the EU speak “different languages” on minorities, the country’s justice minister said yesterday. “We must not engage in a debate which would call into question the unity of Turkey,” Cemil Cicek told a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Anatolia news agency reported. Such a debate would only benefit Kurdish extremists who seek division of the country, added Cicek, who is also the government’s spokesman.

SARAJEVO (AFP) - Two-thirds of Bosnians want the postwar country’s cumbersome bureaucracy to be reduced and taxes to be cut, a survey showed yesterday. Sixty-six percent of 1,600 respondents said they wanted a slimmer administration, the poll led by the Center for Security Studies, a non-governmental organization, showed. Bosnia has over 100 ministerial posts and two highly independent entities — the Serbs’ Republika Srpska and the Muslim Croat Federation.

Eight people have been arrested in London and five in Germany, all of Turkish origin, in connection with an alleged network trafficking people from Turkey to Britain, police said yesterday. “So far we’ve arrested eight people, however there are other arrests being made elsewhere in Europe,” a London police spokeswoman told AFP. (AFP)

Serbia will step up cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia ahead of a key tribunal report to the UN this month, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said yesterday. Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was in Brussels on Wednesday, urging the EU and NATO to put pressure on Belgrade to hand over indictees to the tribunal before she reports to the UN Security Council on November 25. (Reuters)

Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer yesterday congratulated US President George W. Bush for his election victory and expressed hope that his second four-year mandate will help to boost both bilateral and regional cooperation. “I would like to underline our determination to further our cooperation in every field, first and foremost in the fight against terror,” Sezer said. (AFP)