ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has decided to build its first nuclear power plant at Sinop on the Black Sea coast, energy officials said yesterday. “The prime minister’s office and the Energy Ministry have decided to build the nuclear plant at Sinop, taking into account such factors as geological fault lines and cooling water,” an energy official told Reuters. Turkey straddles seismic fault lines and is highly prone to earthquakes. The country has no nuclear power plants at present but a preliminary study envisages the construction of between three and five plants with a total capacity of 5,000 megawatts.

BUCHAREST (AFP) - The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been detected in poultry in Romania, the authorities said yesterday, bringing to six the number of European countries which have found a strain of bird flu that can be transmitted to humans. The virus was identified “in dead poultry” in Tropaizar, near Constanta, in southeastern Romania, the country’s veterinary sanitation agency said, without providing further details.

A United Nations special envoy this week will begin a one-week mission in Turkey to assess counterterrorism measures and their impact on the country’s often-criticized human rights record. Martin Scheinin, the special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, will meet with civilian and military officials in the capital Ankara and in Diyarbakir, the main city of the Kurdish-populated southeast, during his mission from tomorrow to February 23, the UN office here said in a statement yesterday. (AFP)

Serbia-Montenegro’s foreign minister yesterday called on Sweden to contribute a “voice of conscience” when talks start on the final status of Kosovo later this month. “I have very strongly expressed my expectation that Sweden will be the voice of conscience” during the talks, Vuk Draskovic said after meeting with Sweden’s Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds in Stockholm. He added that the negotiations will be “crucially important to European stability.” (AP)

Serbian police said yesterday they had seized 111 kilograms (244.7 pounds) of heroin hidden in a truck with Turkish plates. The drug was discovered Monday during a search of the truck on the border between Serbia and Bulgaria, police said. The heroin was hidden inside textile rolls that were being shipped from Turkey to the southern Serbian city of Novi Pazar. (AP)