BERLIN (AP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a moment of silence yesterday for the nine victims – including five children – of a deadly fire last week. Sunday’s blaze in an apartment building in the southwestern city of Ludwigshafen has increased friction between the two nations amid accusations from some in Turkey that German rescue services failed to respond swiftly enough and suspicions of a racially motivated attack. All nine of the victims were Turkish. Merkel called the fire “a terrible incident that has shaken everyone in Germany, as well as in Turkey” before the moment of silence, held prior to a debate of Berlin high school students on German-Turkish relations. Erdogan, who is taking part in a previously scheduled visit to Germany, called for a fair chance for all immigrants, triggering applause from the dozens of Turkish students in the audience.

ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey said yesterday that a Belgian court ruling acquitting seven Turkish suspects of terror charges was a blow to the the fight against terrorism and would encourage outlawed groups. “The verdict has met with reaction in the Turkish public opinion... Such rulings will undoubtedly encourage terrorist organizations,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. A court in Antwerp on Thursday acquitted at retrial seven suspects of charges of belonging to the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), an extreme left Turkish group which is on the EU terror list. The judges handed down suspended sentences of up to three years to three of them, on firearms and fake documents charges.

A former mujahedeen fighter testified in Sarajevo yesterday in the hearing of the UN war crimes trial against former Bosnian Muslim General Rasim Delic. Aiman Awad was to give evidence about a recently uncovered audio recording of what is purportedly Delic’s speech at a 1996 farewell feast for Arab fighters. Delic, former commander of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army, stands accused of failing to rein in fighters who shot, tortured and beheaded Serb and Croat prisoners during the Balkan country’s 1992-1995 war. (AFP)

Former journalist and anti-communist dissident Max Banus, who broadcast uncensored news to millions in communist Romania for Radio Free Europe, has died. He was 81. Banus died in a Bucharest hospital late Wednesday of a heart attack, Romanian news agencies reported. Banus was buried yesterday at the Jewish cemetery in Bucharest. He is survived by his wife and his son. (AP)