ISTANBUL (AP) - Leaders of neighbors Turkey and Armenia are expected to meet for rare talks at a summit next week, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency said yesterday. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian President Robert Kocharian were expected to meet on the sidelines of a Council of Europe summit scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in Warsaw, the agency said. The date of the meeting was not specified. Turkish and Armenian officials could not immediately confirm the report. However, Council of Europe spokesman Can Fisek said there were “strong indications” the leaders would meet.

SOFIA (Reuters) - Three Romanian journalists seized in Iraq last month are still alive and Bucharest is negotiating their release, Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu said yesterday. Insurgents kidnapped the reporters and their guide in March and said they would kill them if the staunch US ally did not immediately withdraw its 800 troops from Iraq. A deadline expired on April 27 but Bucharest has asked for an extension as it negotiates for their freedom.

Romanian pharmaceutical wholesalers announced yesterday that they were joining medical supplies sellers in a boycott of indebted hospitals, throwing the Romanian health system into its deepest crisis since the country shook off communism in 1989. The Association of Drug Distributors and Importers and the Association of Romanian Drug Suppliers, two groups representing most companies on the drug market, said they could no longer grant credit to hospitals. The groups claim that 90 percent of hospitals and pharmacies have unpaid bills, which amount to over 200 million euros. The crisis is caused by chronic underfunding of the health system in recent years. (AP)

A Bosnian couple burned themselves and four policemen when they poured gasoline over police evicting them from their apartment and set it alight, police said yesterday. “The incident occurred when Mico Maric poured gasoline over two policemen and himself. While policemen tried to wrestle him down his wife lit a match,” police spokesman Radovan Pejic told journalists. Two other policemen, who tried to help their colleagues, and Maric’s wife, were also caught in the fire in the Bosnian-Serb capital of Banja Luka. Hospital officials said Maric and three policemen were in critical condition after they sustained heavy burns. (AFP)

The Hague tribunal found a defense witness for Slobodan Milosevic guilty of contempt of court yesterday after he refused to testify when the former Yugoslav president was ill last month. Kosta Bulatovic, a Kosovo Serb leader, refused last month to be cross-examined by prosecutors without Milosevic in court, prompting the three-judge panel to charge him with contempt. The UN court sentenced Bulatovic for contempt to four months in jail but suspended the sentence for two years due to his health problems. (Reuters)