ANKARA (AFP) - NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer will visit Turkey next week for talks on «priority issues» concerning the transatlantic alliance, the Turkish foreign ministry said yesterday. De Hoop Scheffer will meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Chief of Staff Yasar Buyukanit and Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul during the June 11-12 visit. «The visit will allow both sides to discuss priority issues on the alliance's agenda... ahead of a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels on June 14-15,» the ministry said in a statement. The talks will coincide with current discussions on US plans to build part of its missile shield in Europe, which, under its current design, does not cover some NATO allies, including Turkey. The United States said in January that it wants to extend its missile shield into Europe by installing 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar unit in the Czech Republic, linked to an early warning system, possibly in the Caucasus. Washington maintains that the new part of the shield would protect not only the eastern United States, but also many of its European allies against attacks from nations deemed by Washington to be «rogue states» - mainly Iran but also North Korea. But, under its current design, the US shield would leave Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey - all NATO member states - either partially or totally outside the missile umbrella.

BUCHAREST (AFP) - Romania rejected claims by a Council of Europe investigator yesterday that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had run secret prisons in Romania to interrogate terror suspects. «It is regrettable that the rapporteur thinks Romania 'welcomed secret prisons.' This report, like the previous one, provides no evidence to confirm these allegations, except for unidentified 'sources,' whose credibility cannot be assessed,» the Romanian foreign ministry said in a statement. «The ministry restates its complete readiness to keep cooperating with the Council of Europe rapporteur, as it has already in the past.» The investigator, Dick Marty, said yesterday in his second report on illegal CIA activities in Europe that «there is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania.»

No bodies have been found at a site that was suspected to be a mass grave in southern Serbia, a judge said yesterday after investigators searched for three days for the remains of victims of the 1998-99 Kosovo war. «We found no human remains,» said Milan Dilparic of the Belgrade-based Special Court handling war crimes cases, including the atrocities committed during the Kosovo fighting between Serb government troops and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian separatists.(AP)