ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) would become the third-largest party in parliament after this year’s election, a survey published yesterday showed. The poll, conducted by Selcuk University in the central city of Konya and carried in several newspapers, showed the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) would again be the largest party with 31.6 percent. The MHP would win 14.2 percent, the poll showed. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), nominally left-leaning but also nationalist-minded, would win 15.5 percent in the election, which must be held by November. The poll also showed more than half of Turks are opposed to the scrapping of a law which makes it a crime to insult Turkish national identity or state institutions.

SOFIA (AP) – Bulgarians across the country yesterday staged shows of solidarity with five compatriots sentenced to death in Libya, to mark the eighth anniversary of their arrest. Students marched to the Libyan Embassy where they left some 400 red roses with a message in Arabic saying, “Dear child, you are not alone,” for each of the Libyan children infected with AIDS in an epidemic blamed on the medics. The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor have been in jail since February 1999, accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi.

Bosnia’s central parliament approved yesterday a new cabinet headed by Prime Minister Nikola Spiric, four months after an October 1 election. Bickering by mainly Muslim and Croat parties delayed the formation of the central cabinet and of the parliament and government of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation, which comprises Bosnia together with the Serb Republic. Spiric, a member of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats which swept to victory in Bosnia’s Serb half, said his cabinet would speed up the reforms necessary to bring the country closer to the EU. (Reuters)

Around 1,000 taxi drivers angered by the killing of a colleague drove their cars to the front of the parliament building yesterday to urge the Bulgarian government to improve its law-and-order policies. Emil Emilov, 51, was found dead in his cab early yesterday morning. He was reportedly stabbed with a knife by an unidentified customer, police said. Taxis blocked main streets in a rally, causing huge traffic jams and chaos. At noon, traffic in downtown Sofia came to virtual standstill. Protesters booed Interior Minister Rumen Petkov, who came to try to calm them. (AP)