ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday sharply criticized Israel’s assault on Lebanon as unacceptable and accused Western powers of failing to step in to end the violence. “One cannot hold a country responsible for an act by an organization. One cannot annihilate an entire country and all the civilians in it. Nobody has that right,” Erdogan told a gathering of businessmen here. “This is not a humane approach and it does not contribute to global peace.” Erdogan has become one of the most vocal critics of Israel since the Jewish state stormed Palestinian territories last month to rescue an abducted soldier and began pounding Lebanon one week ago in retaliation for the killing and capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas. Describing the violence as “a conflagration that can affect the entire world,” Erdogan said the West’s failure to step in had led to the escalation of the conflict. “Unfortunately, the states of the world are still failing or are unable to show the necessary initiative in the Middle East.”

BELGRADE (AFP) - The Serbian government has named two key officials to supervise and oversee an action plan aimed at arresting a top war crimes suspect, former Bosnian-Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, the Beta news agency reported yesterday. Serbia’s special war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic and Rasim Ljajic, chairman of the National Council for cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, will supervise the implementation of the action plan, the agency said. “They will receive reports from all civilian and military security services on all actions aimed at Mladic’s arrest,” the agency reported. The three-page action plan includes a media campaign highlighting the Mladic case, security and legal elements and ways to improve cooperation with the ICTY, and evokes the need to amend some specific laws.

Albanian and Italian rescue services were still searching late on Monday for a helicopter which crashed into the Adriatic Sea off southern Italy carrying six people, including Albania’s former deputy prime minister Gramoz Pashko. “For the time being none of the bodies have been found, nor the debris of the helicopter, but the search will continue even throughout the night,” Albanian Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu told Parliament. Earlier Albanian army chief General Pellum Qazimi told AFP the helicopter went down late Sunday off the coast near the southern Italian city of Bari. “The accident happened at 10.05 p.m. when the military helicopter which was transporting the former deputy prime minister Gramoz Pashko to an Italian hospital crashed into the Adriatic Sea,” he said. “Albanian and Italian police and army forces are currently conducting a search.” (AFP)

Police have discovered four bodies in the wreckage of a small plane in a remote wooded area in eastern Serbia, it was revealed yesterday. The French-made Robin sports aircraft crashed on Saturday near Zajecar, close to the Bulgarian border, police said. The victims were identified as a Swiss married couple and a French brother and sister. The Bulgarian Transport Ministry said that the plane was one of six small aircraft - four French and two Swiss - that had departed from Gorna Oryhovica in Bulgaria heading for Osijek in Croatia. The wreckage and the bodies were discovered Monday in a rugged and wooded mountainous area near Zajecar, some 150 km (90 miles) southeast of Belgrade. (AP)