ANKARA (Combined reports) - Gunmen in Iraq stopped a convoy of trucks and killed a Turkish truckdriver who was unable to recite prayers, a report said yesterday. Gunmen stopped the convoy in northern Iraq, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the border with Turkey on Monday and killed trucker Osman Alisan, CNN-Turk television said. The Turkish Foreign Ministry could not confirm the report, but the Anatolia news agency said Alisan’s employers notified the trucker’s family of his death and were making arrangements to return his body to Turkey. Meanwhile, Foreign Trade Minister Kursat Tuzmen said yesterday that Turkey must continue trading with Iraq despite the spate of abductions of Turkish truckdrivers by militants. (AP, Reuters)

ANKARA (AFP) - Four former Turkish MPs who spent a decade behind bars before their conviction for links with armed Kurdish rebels was overturned by the appeals court will be tried again in October, a lawyer for the defendants said yesterday. “The date of the new trial has been set for October 22,” attorney Yusuf Alatas told AFP. The trial will be the third on the same charges for human rights award winner Leyla Zana (photo), Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan in a legal saga which could influence Turkey’s bid to join the EU.

Hungary said yesterday it had called on Belgrade to bring a halt to the recent violence against the ethnic Hungarian minority in Serbia. Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs said he has sent a letter to Serbian President Vojislav Kostunica asking him to “use his personal authority to bring an end to atrocities to which ethnic Hungarians have fallen victim,” the government said in a statement. Kovacs also urged Kostunica to “find and punish those responsible for the attacks.” More than 350,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Serbia’s northern Vojvodina province. (AFP)

Russia warned yesterday of growing tensions in the restive Serbian province of Kosovo in the runup to legislative elections in October and called on the UN to act. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Razov told the Ria Novosti news agency that he feared a further deterioration in relations between Serbs and the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo. “In the current climate, we cannot rule out more incidents like those of March,” Razov was quoted as saying. (AFP)

Croatia yesterday celebrated the ninth anniversary of what the prime minister called a “brilliant” military operation that ended Serb occupation of one-third of Croatian territory and led to the end of the country’s 1991-1995 war. President Stipe Mesic and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader attended the main ceremony in the key battle site of Knin, where Sanader hailed “the brilliant operations by the Croatian army and police that freed the central part of the country.” (AFP)