MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday set out plans for new gas pipelines through Turkey to supply southern European markets and made a wide-ranging bid for Russia to build up Turkey’s energy infrastructure after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “We do not exclude the possibility of building a new gas line and oil pipelines” for exports, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying after talks in the southern Russian resort of Sochi.

SOFIA (AP) - Bulgaria’s President Georgi Parvanov yesterday handed the leader of the Socialist Party, the winner of last month’s parliamentary elections, a mandate to form a new government. Sergei Stanishev, a 39-year-old historian, appointed unanimously by his party as their candidate for prime minister, has a week to form a government and introduce the cabinet list for parliamentary approval. Stanishev’s candidacy has already been approved by the Socialists’ possible future partners — the centrist party of outgoing prime minister Simeon Saxe Coburg and a smaller ethnic Turkish party.

Bosnian Croats, Muslims and Serbs yesterday agreed to merge their separate armies into a single force by 2007, more than a decade after the country’s bitter inter-ethnic war. The agreement was reached by an internationally led defense reform commission tasked with bringing Bosnia’s armed forces into line with NATO standards. But the deal has yet to be ratified by the central parliament and Bosnia’s two postwar entities — the Republika Srpska and the Muslim Croat Federation. The Serb parliament has already rejected other efforts to centralize defense structures. (AFP)