ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey’s former prime minister Bulent Ecevit was fighting for his life yesterday after suffering a brain hemorrhage. Once a leader of the Turkish left, he was also a well-known poet and translator. He was just one week shy of his 81st birthday when he was taken to the GATA military hospital late on Thursday. Ecevit, a small, sprightly man with a black moustache who often sports a Greek sailor’s cap, has lived for years in a modest flat in suburban Ankara with his wife Rahsan, his childhood sweetheart. Unlike other politicians, neither he nor his wife have ever been involved in business and have enjoyed a reputation of unblemished honesty in the corruption-plagued world of Turkish politics.

BELGRADE (AFP) - Belgrade appealed yesterday for UN-backed talks on Kosovo between Serbian and ethnic-Albanian negotiators to focus directly on the territory’s future status, saying progress was too slow. “We propose that we move directly to talks on the future status” of Kosovo because “the talks on decentralization have not yielded concrete results,” said a senior member of the Serbian team. The Serbian negotiators made the appeal in a letter to the contact group of countries overseeing security in the Balkans — the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and US.

The manager of a major poultry farm in Romania was arrested yesterday on charges of allowing the sale of chickens possibly infected with a form of bird flu, prosecutors in the town of Brasov said. The unnamed manager is the third person from the Drakom Silva poultry operation in Codlea to be arrested in the last few days. The farm’s veterinarian and its owner were both arrested on Wednesday and could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted. (AFP)

Three people, including two teenage brothers, were killed in a late-night drive-by shooting at an Internet cafe in the FYROM capital of Skopje, police said yesterday. Six others were seriously wounded in the shooting around 11.45 p.m. Thursday in an ethnic-Albanian neighborhood in Skopje, authorities said.Their conditions were not considered life-threatening, police said. The motive for the shooting was unclear, a police spokesman said. (AP)

A truck carrying Afghan nationals, apparently illegal immigrants, collided with a transport truck in southern Turkey, leaving at least 30 people dead, officials said. The accident occurred near the southern town of Osmaniye in Adana province, the governor’s office said. (AP)