ANKARA (AFP) – A suspected suicide bomber detonated a car outside the southern Turkish city of Mersin while on the run from the police yesterday, killing himself and wounding 12 officers, officials and media said. “We are considering the possibility of a suicide bomber,” Mersin Governor Huseyin Aksoy told the Anatolia news agency. The governor said the car was believed to contain only its driver, who detonated the device when police tried to stop the vehicle on a road on the outskirts of the Mediterranean city. The car was being pursued by the police who had intelligence that a suicide bomber was preparing an attack in Mersin, Anatolia said. The car did not stop despite repeated warnings by the police and exploded on a road outside the city. Twelve policemen were injured, Anatolia said, adding that the security forces were trying to identify the assailant. Television footage showed police spraying water on a charred metal wreckage. Two of the wounded policemen were reported to be in serious condition.

THE HAGUE (AP) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic says he wants a Dutch judge disqualified from hearing his case. Karadzic is on trial for genocide and war crimes. The judge at the preliminary stage is Alphons Orie, who has been on the bench in other high-profile cases against Serb defendants. Karadzic said in a letter to the president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal released yesterday that Orie has a personal interest in convicting him. He said a conviction would reinforce earlier judgments by Orie’s court and justify what Karadzic calls draconian sentences in previous cases. Orie has been a judge at the tribunal since 2001. He presided over Karadzic’s first courtroom appearance after his capture last month in Serbia. Karadzic declined to enter a plea.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Abdullah Gul released former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who was ousted by the military in 1997 for being too Islamist, from house arrest yesterday. Gul, a former Islamist, said Erbakan’s poor health was the reason for the pardon. Erbakan, 82, was found guilty six years ago of fraud in a party financing scandal. Gul served as a minister under Erbakan with the Islamist Welfare Party, the predecessor of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The pardon comes as tension between the secularist establishment, including the military, and the government has eased following the end of a court case that had threatened to plunge Turkey, which hopes to join the EU, into political chaos.

A controversial novel about the Prophet Muhammad’s life was pulled from bookstores in Serbia to avoid conflict with the country’s Muslim minority, the publisher said yesterday. “The Jewel of Medina,” a debut novel by American journalist Sherry Jones, hit bookstores in Serbia on August 1, a week before Random House canceled its launch in the United States scheduled for August 12. “There is always a market for historical novels in Serbia,” said Aleksandar Jasic, director of Serbian publisher Beobook. “I didn’t think it was an insult to anyone.” On Sunday, two weeks after the book arrived in Serbian bookstores, the Islamic community demanded a ban on its sale. By then, they had already sold 600 copies, but publisher Beobook agreed to end its distribution of the remaining 400 copies of its initial print run. “Serbia is the only country where the book has actually been sold,” said Jasic, adding that his publishing goal was simply to make money, not any political statement. (Reuters)

Foreign creditors in Bulgaria’s insolvent Kremikovtzi steel mill said yesterday they have appealed a court decision that could jeopardize repayment of a bond of $478 million. Earlier this month, the Sofia City Court ruled Bulgaria’s biggest steel mill had been insolvent since December 2005, five months before the bond was issued. The bondholders fear that by this ruling the bond could be considered unsecured debt which would deprive them of their “contractual rights and claims.” (AP)