ANKARA (AP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted yesterday that he was not using a NATO summit in Latvia as a pretext to avoid meeting the pope later this month. The comments came in response to suggestions that Erdogan was trying to avoid a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI mindful of the impact such a meeting would have on voters. Erdogan told journalists yesterday that the alliance’s summit was too important to miss. “A NATO summit does not occur all the time... Had it been a private meeting, I would have canceled it, but this is a NATO summit meeting, all heads of states, including the US president, will be there,” Erdogan said.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turk accused of rape made his 16-year-old daughter marry his alleged victim’s husband in a deal to avoid a blood feud in Turkey’s rural and conservative southeast, a rights group said yesterday. “The woman’s husband took a woman from the (alleged rapist’s) family, his daughter,” Zelal Ozgokce, founder of the local non-governmental organization Van Women’s Association, told Reuters, citing police.

Britain’s minister for Europe expressed support yesterday for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s bid to join the EU, despite an admission by the country’s government that reforms had slowed. “We want to see Macedonia in the European Union, and it is clear that the sooner the pace of reform is completed, the sooner Macedonia can join the EU,” Geoff Hoon said after the talks with FYROM’s new prime minister, Nikola Gruevski. Hoon is on a three-day Balkan trip to Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro. (AP)

A new mass grave believed to contain the remains of dozens of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre has been discovered in northeastern Bosnia, an official said yesterday. The grave in Snagovo, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Srebrenica, was found after experts received a tip-off from an undisclosed source, said Murat Hurtic of Bosnia’s Missing Persons Commission. “We expect to find several dozen bodies in this grave,” Hurtic told AFP. “We are sure that the grave contains the remains of people from Srebrenica,” he said. (AFP)

Montenegro’s Parliament convened yesterday to inaugurate a new government, a first for the world’s newest country, which gained independence in June. The mandate to form the new Cabinet has been given to Zeljko Sturanovic, the former justice minister and a close ally of outgoing Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, who is stepping down after leading the separation of the tiny Balkan state from Serbia. The assembly is dominated by the Djukanovic-led Democratic Party of Socialists and allied parties, which triumphed in September’s general elections. (AP)