TIRANA (AP) - Election administrators were still counting votes yesterday from Albania’s weekend poll to elect the new parliament, officials said. The counting, in its fourth day, has suffered numerous delays since Sunday’s voting. Officials blamed procedures and several boycotts by party members appointed to the local commissions. “The procedure is such that we can’t speed up the counting,” said Ilirian Celibashi, the head of the Central Election Commission, the body in charge of the process. Final results, which were initially scheduled to be released Monday, were now tentatively set for today, Celibashi said.

MITROVICA (Reuters) - A moderate Serb coalition in Kosovo split with official Belgrade policy yesterday, announcing it would end its 16-month boycott of the province’s Albanian-dominated parliament. “Since the scheduled meeting with the highest officials in Belgrade was postponed... we took a decision today to join the work of the Kosovo Parliament,” Randjel Nojkic, a member of the Serb list for Kosovo and Metohija, told Reuters.

Pope Benedict may visit Muslim Turkey later this year to meet his Orthodox counterpart as part of his bid to strengthen Christian unity, a Patriarchate official said yesterday. Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios, spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, has invited the 78-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff to attend St Andrew’s Feast Day on Nov. 30. (Reuters)

A prominent former Kurdish politician was shot and killed outside his home in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey yesterday, but local security sources ruled out any political motives behind the murder. A lone assailant shot Hikmet Fidan, 50, once in the head outside a building in the regional capital of Diyarbakir before fleeing the scene, a security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP. Fidan died on the spot. (AFP)

A wall collapsed in a coal mine, killing two miners yesterday, authorities said. The accident occurred overnight at the Petrila coal mine in western Romania. (AP)