ANKARA (AP) - Turkey's center-right Motherland Party has elected a new leader after former Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz resigned because of a poor showing in recent elections. A party congress on Saturday overwhelmingly embraced Ali Talip Ozdemir, a former party lawmaker, as its new chairman. The Motherland Party was the first party to be popularly elected after a 1980 military coup, forming a single-party government in 1983 under Turgut Ozal. In November elections, the party failed to cross the 10-percent threshold required to hold seats in parliament.

BELGRADE (AP) - The head of a state-owned Yugoslav tire and rubber factory said on Saturday that his firm had exported gas masks to Iraq, a news agency reported. The head of the Trajal factory, Zavisa Jovanovic, told Beta news agency that his company had exported gas masks to Iraq and several other countries. He claimed the payments of $16.5 million were delivered to the Yugoslav state but passed on to the firm. Jovanovic told Beta he would sue the state to demand that the factory receives the money. No one answered the phone at the Trajal factory on Saturday evening.

Romanian journalists and free-speech advocates expressed outrage on Saturday about a draft law that would make publishing comments deemed to be biased or offensive to the state a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. A draft law presented Friday afternoon said publishing material «offending to the Romanian nation» would be punishable by two to five years in prison, while the publication of «untrue or biased news abroad that injures the interests and honor of the nation» would result in the same punishment. (AP)

A British hiker who broke his pelvis when falling down a rock face during a hike in Romania's Transylvanian Mountains spent four days dragging himself to safety, a doctor said on Saturday. Kenneth Jones, 26, slipped and fell into a crevasse during a hike in the Fagaras Mountains in Romania's Transylvania region, said Dr Marius Tecau, the chief physician at Brasov Hospital's intensive care unit, which admitted Jones on Thursday. Tecau said Jones told physicians he dragged himself through the rocky mountains for four days before reaching the village of Sumerna where residents treated him and called an ambulance. (AP)