PARIS (Reuters) - An Italian cardinal ranked as a front-runner to succeed Pope John Paul has called on Europe to be less defensive and fearful about the prospect of Muslim Turkey joining the EU. “Just saying ‘no’ doesn’t protect us from anything,” Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Venice, 63, said in an interview in yesterday’s Le Figaro newspaper. “As a Christian, I can’t forget that Turkey also means Constantinople and the Ecumenical Patriarch of the East,” he said, referring to the head of the Orthodox churches. “My Orthodox brothers want Turkey to join Europe.”

ANKARA (Reuters) - Four lawmakers who recently quit Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) joined the center-right Motherland Party yesterday, reigniting talk of a broader realignment in Turkish politics. Their decision gives Motherland its first representation in the current Parliament. Erkan Mumcu, who quit as tourism minister and resigned from the AKP last month, is expected to run for the Motherland Party leadership, CNN Turk said.

A former Bosnian-Serb army officer, indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, left Belgrade yesterday to surrender to the court in The Hague, Serbian government sources said. Drago Nikolic, 47, has been indicted for “genocide or complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity” over the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. (AFP)

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said yesterday he hoped the second round of municipal elections in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia would meet democratic standards after reports by international observers of “serious irregularities” in last weekend’s first round of voting “particularly in the west of the country,” De Hoop Scheffer said in a statement. The next round of the municipal elections is to be March 27. (AFP)

A teenager died yesterday after he was beaten into a coma outside his school, the Serbian goverment said. Nikola Kovacevic, 16, died at the Belgrade emergency clinic after three days in a coma, the ministry said in a statement. Kovacevic was cornered and attacked by three other youths on Monday outside his Belgrade high school, police said. The unnamed attackers have been arrested, police said. (AP)