ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's chief state prosecutor yesterday criticized Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plans to change the constitution, especially his aim to trim the powers of the president. Erdogan, a former Islamist, has proposed having the president elected directly by voters instead of by parliament as a way of overcoming opposition from Turkey's secular elite, including the army, to his government and its policies. He also wants to cut back the powers of the president, who can now veto laws and appoints key officials such as top judges. «Trying to overcome every political and administrative problem by changing the constitution... leads to tensions in politics and society,» Nuri Ok, chief state prosecutor at Turkey's Court of Appeals, said in a speech.

SOFIA (AP) - Foreign ministers and senior officials from 18 Central and Southeast European countries met yesterday in Bulgaria's capital to discuss cooperation in the region and the future reform of the Central European Initiative. On behalf of Bulgaria, which holds the organization's rotating presidency, Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin urged closer cooperation to improve the prospects for members who do not yet belong to the EU to join the bloc. He also called for harmonizing CEI priorities with those of other regional organizations. The initiative was created 17 years ago to bring the Central and Southeast European countries closer to the EU. Participating countries are Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Police in Kosovo raided a casino and an insurance company yesterday and arrested three Turkish nationals suspected of fraud, a spokesman said. Officers of police financial crime units also searched the homes of the firms' owners as part of the investigation into alleged tax evasion and money laundering, police spokesman Veton Elshani said. The alleged fraud cost Kosovo around 42 million euros (US$2.7 million) in lost revenues, Elshani said. The force also shut down the casino, located in Pristina. (AP)

Bosnia will use its newly won seat on the top UN human rights body to help prevent widespread rights violations like those in its 1992-95 war from happening elsewhere, Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj said yesterday. The Balkan state, born out of the conflict in which at least 100,000 Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were killed, was elected to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday at the expense of Belarus, whose bid Washington strongly opposed. «Bosnia has credibility, on the basis of what happened, to be a mouthpiece so that this is never repeated anywhere else in the world,» Alkalaj said. (Reuters)