DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) – A court in southeastern Turkey has sentenced a mayor to seven years in jail for belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and saying that the group is “not a terrorist organization.” Officials said that the court in Van sentenced Metin Tekce, mayor of Hakkari near the Iraqi border, in absentia late on Monday after it found him guilty of being a member of a “terrorist organization” and making propaganda on its behalf. Tekce had told a parliamentary commission “the PKK is not a terrorist organization” and later reaffirmed this view. He did not attend his trial and officials said he was in France.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A team of Turkish experts began a two-day visit to Jerusalem yesterday to survey Israeli excavations near one of Islam’s holiest sites, a Turkish official said. Israel’s archaeological dig is taking place 50 meters from a religious compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount. Muslims fear the work will damage the complex where the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques stand. Israel says the dig will do no harm to the compound, which overlooks Judaism’s Western Wall.

A Kosovo Albanian man and his Serb wife won an appeal against their expulsion from the Netherlands yesterday due to the risk of rights violations if they returned to the UN-run Serbian province. “On their return to Kosovo, the displaced family risks becoming the victim of human rights violations... The situation for ethnic minorities in Kosovo is still bad,” the appeals court at Bois-le-Duc, southern Netherlands, said. “The family is part of more than one group at risk as defined by the ministry’s reports, in regard to ethnic Serbs and people in mixed marriages.” (AFP)

Slovenia, home to Europe’s largest wild bear population, yesterday rejected accusations from the conservation body WWF that it allows too much hunting and insisted that numbers must be limited for the bears’ good. Slovenia this month announced it was retaining an annual hunting quota of 100 bears, out of a total of 500 to 700. But the WWF said the quota was too high, as the exact number of bears had not been properly determined. (Reuters)

An elderly Serb man failed a driving test despite having spent 45 years behind the wheel, a report said yesterday. The 75-year-old pensioner said that he took pride in the fact that he had never been stopped by police for having made any traffic violations, a feat which he felt was deserving of an “honorary license.” (AFP)