ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish Economy Minister Ali Babacan will hold talks with US Treasury Secretary John Snow next week in Dubai on an expected US loan of 8.5 billion dollars (7.52 billion euros) for Turkey. Babacan and Snow will meet on Monday on the sidelines of the annual gatherings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the Turkish treasury said yesterday. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was also to attend the Dubai gatherings. His program will also include talks with leaders of the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi today and in Dubai tomorrow.

SOFIA (AP) - Six former American ambassadors to Bulgaria yesterday attended celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United States and Bulgaria. The unusual ceremony marked the day a century ago when John B. Jackson presented his diplomatic credentials to Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Jackson had been dispatched by US President Theodore Roosevelt and arrived at the palace in a four-horse carriage owned by the royal family. Ferdinand’s grandson, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, is now the prime minister of Bulgaria and he praised the firm ties the two countries now share.

A Bosnian-Serb army captain who confessed in a plea bargain to his role in the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica took the stand against his former superior at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal yesterday. Momir Nikolic, 48, testified in the trial of Col. Vidoje Blagojevic and Lt. Col. Dragan Jokic, with whom he was initially indicted for genocide. As part of an agreement in May, UN prosecutors dropped the most serious charges against Nikolic and he pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity for persecution during the 1992-195 Bosnian war. Nikolic was the first of six war crimes suspects who struck plea deals this year to appear in court as a witness. (AP)

Six members of a party supporting Turkey’s separatist Kurdish minority were arrested yesterday after protesting the prison conditions of convicted Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, a party official said. The spokesman for the DEHAP party said the six were being held at Gaziantep, in the southeast of Turkey, where there is a large, restless Kurdish minority. The six arrested, including DEHAP regional branch chairman Vakkas Dalkilig, had taken part in a press conference last week calling for Ocalan to be transferred to another prison, said party spokesman Kemal Avci. (AFP)