SOFIA (AFP) - The Bulgarian Socialist Party, which came out ahead in elections on June 25, on Saturday reached agreement with two center-right parties on a governing platform, although problems remained about assigning top posts, a party official said. Rumen Ovcharov, vice president of the BSP, said the agreement was reached between his party and the previous ruling party, the National Movement of Simeon II (MNSII), and the smaller Turkish-minority Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). However the BSP and the MNSII still had to agree which of them would provide the prime minister in the new government, with outgoing MSNII premier, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, reportedly still seeking to keep the job.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Another seven people in eastern Turkey have contracted anthrax after eating contaminated meat in an outbreak that has hit 42 people, but no fatalities have been reported, officials said on Saturday. Health authorities have quarantined the village of Cukurca in Bingol province, where the outbreak began earlier this week. Thirteen people remain in hospital, including a 10-year-old boy and his sister, 9, who are in critical condition, officials told the state-run Anatolian news agency.

A land mine planted by Kurdish rebels exploded under a military vehicle in southeastern Turkey, killing three soldiers, a regional governor said Saturday. At least eight other soldiers were injured in the explosion, Gov. Erdogan Gurbuz said. The Anatolia news agency said as many as 15 soldiers were injured. The explosion occurred as the soldiers were patrolling an area near the town of Semdinli, in Hakkari province, where the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Iran converge. (AP)

Two children were killed and three seriously injured when a land mine exploded yesterday in western Kosovo, police said. The children, aged between 10 and 13, were playing near their house in the village of Grebnik, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the province’s capital, Pristina, when the mine went off, said police spokesman Avni Morina. (AP)

Former Albanian President Sali Berisha, also the winner of July 3rd elections, announced yesterday that a senior local official in his party was kidnapped several days after last weekend’s parliamentary elections. Behar Kastrati, 40, the Democratic Party’s official in Has, 250 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of the capital Tirana, has not returned home since Friday, according to sources in the party’s headquarters. (AFP)

Turkish security forces at a Mediterranean resort detained 61 illegal migrants who were planning to sneak into Greece, Anatolia reported Saturday. The security forces detained the migrants — from Pakistan, Somalia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Burma and Mauritania — after searching a truck and a car traveling near the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris. (AP)