PRISTINA (AP) - Hundreds of ethnic Albanians clashed with UN special police units in western Kosovo yesterday, protesting the recent arrests of several ethnic Albanian rebels, an official said. The clash occurred after Spanish forces in riot gear tried to move a crowd that was blocking a key road in Decani, a town some 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Pristina. The protesters reacted by throwing rocks at police. Police in turn used tear gas to disperse the crowd, said Andrea Angeli, a spokesman for the UN mission in Kosovo province. One NATO peacekeeper was hurt when he was reportedly hit by a rock during the unrest.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Nations around Iraq, such as Turkey and Iran, will also suffer “harmful consequences” if Washington attacks Baghdad, warned the newspaper run by President Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, Uday, yesterday. “The greatest loss for Turkey will be its relations with Iraq,” Babel said. “No one, not even the Americans, can compensate for what we have given to Turkey,” the daily stressed, presumably referring to cheap oil and general cross-border trade.

More than 100,000 Orthodox believers, most of them sick or disabled, flocked to a monastery in northwestern Romania yesterday to kiss an ancient icon believed to have miraculous healing powers. Despite rain and unsettled weather, believers on crutches and in wheelchairs began arriving three days earlier at the 16th-century Nicula Monastery, some 450 kilometers (280 miles) northwest of Bucharest, hoping to get near the icon. According to legend, the icon of the Weeping Virgin, painted in 1691, wept for 26 days in 1699. (AP)

Former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan plans to run in early elections despite a five-year ban on political activity for anti-secular activities that got him ousted after a one-year term, Recai Kutan, head of the pro-Islamic Felicity Party (SP), said yesterday. (AFP)

Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer on Wednesday asked the constitutional court to scrap regulations that stipulate heavy fines for offences committed by the press as a part of a package of EU-oriented democracy reforms, a statement from his office said. It said the amount of the fines — ranging from 10 billion and 100 billion Turkish liras (6,100 and 61,000 dollars) — violate constitutional articles on the right to information, freedom of press, requirements of democracy and the need for proportional penalties for offences. (AFP)