ANKARA (AP) - Police detained six suspected Kurdish militants they believe planted a bomb on a bus carrying judges and prosecutors last week, authorities said yesterday, while a soldier died from wounds sustained in a clash with Kurdish rebels a day earlier. A militant Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, claimed responsibility for placing the bomb, which did not go off. The group, believed to be linked to the outlawed autonomy seeking Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said the bomb was a warning. Police said the suspects had been trained in PKK camps abroad.

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria’s president yesterday hit back at EU criticism of corruption that could delay its entry to the bloc, saying there was evidence the country was less corrupt than neighboring Romania, which has won EU praise. The EU’s executive Commission has urged Sofia to crack down on graft, giving it until the end of April to address “serious concerns” over weak rule of law and high-level corruption. But President Georgi Parvanov said the EU had not considered data showing the situation in Bulgaria is better than in fellow-candidate Romania, which has earned praise for its efforts to fight graft. “It is not a surprise that the area of justice and interior affairs is pointed out as problematic, but it is important to show the entire picture,” he told national radio.

Patriarch Pavle, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, was hospitalized yesterday, the Church said. The 91-year-old religious leader was taken to a top military hospital in Belgrade “because of the general condition of his health, related to his age,” the Church said in a terse statement. “His Holiness is expected to recover,” a top dignitary told The Associated Press but declined to specify the cleric’s ailments. (AP)

Kosovo’s communist-era leader Mahmut Bakalli died of throat cancer yesterday, an official from his party said. He was 70. At the time of his death, Bakalli served as an adviser to Kosovo’s current prime minister, Agim Ceku. He led the disputed province’s communists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He stepped down over disagreements with the central body of the Yugoslav Communist party over the handling of the ethnic Albanian student unrest that broke out then. (AP)