ANKARA – President Abdullah Gul will travel to Brussels next week for talks aimed at accelerating negotiations on Turkey’s entry into the European Union, a government official in Ankara said yesterday. During his two-day trip to the EU headquarters, starting on Thursday, the Turkish president should meet with European Union Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and take part in a meeting of business leaders, said the source on condition of anonymity. Gul will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and the government’s chief negotiator on EU entry, Egemen Bagis.

ANKARA (AP) – A Turkish court has charged a man with planning to shoot and kill Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at an election rally. The court in Istanbul says the man was arrested at a rally Monday attended by Erdogan in the western city of Tekirdag during campaigning for local elections on March 29. A court statement yesterday said that he was also charged with illegally carrying a firearm. It gave no further details. Earlier this month, police detained five people on suspicion of planning to attack Erdogan during an election rally in the southern city of Adana but they were released without charge following interrogation by police.

ZAGREB (AFP) – Croatian war crimes trials remain tainted by political pressure, one of the main problems facing the ex-Yugoslav republic’s judiciary, rights groups said yesterday. Authorities “have not made the progress expected in war crimes trials and the most serious problem happens year after year,” said Vesna Terselic of Documenta, a nongovernmental organization specializing in war crimes. The trials were “always held in an adverse political context, and lacked competent personnel and the technical conditions for the protection of witnesses,” she said presenting a report by several NGOs. “A large number of verdicts were pronounced in the absence of the accused,” said Terselic, noting more than a third of the 78 defendants tried in 22 cases in 2008 were fugitives. In terms of political pressure, the nongovernmental organizations criticized parliamentary “interference” allowing Branimir Glavas, an ex-general accused of atrocities against Serbs in Croatia’s 1991-1995 war, to avoid detention during his trial.

Serbia and Croatia have agreed to boost relations despite issues left over from the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic of Serbia and Ivo Sanader of Croatia say it is time to move forward. Sanader visited Belgrade yesterday for the first time since relations were strained last year over Croatia’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence, which Serbia rejects. Cvetkovic says Kosovo remains a problem, along with a Croatian genocide suit against Serbia. But both officials agreed to improve economic and other ties. (AP)

Turkey’s state broadcaster plans to launch an Armenian-language radio station, the Anatolia state news agency said yesterday, amid tentative moves by Turkey and its neighbor Armenia toward restoring diplomatic ties. “At this stage, we will refrain from any comments,” an Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman said when asked about the report of the planned radio station yesterday. (Reuters)

Organizers say President Barack Obama is to attend a meeting in Turkey aimed at bridging differences between the West and Muslim nations. Obama is scheduled to visit Turkey on April 5-7 during his first trip as president to a Muslim nation. Organizers said in a statement yesterday that Obama is expected to attend the forum on the last day of his trip. They said the prime ministers of Spain and Turkey and the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will also attend the UN-backed Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Istanbul. (AP)

Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero insisted yesterday that he was pulling Spanish troops out of Kosovo because security had improved and Madrid’s role made no sense as it did not recognize the territory. “A year ago, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence and, as is well known, Spain did not recognize this,” he told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels. “For this reason, our role in this scenario lost some of its sense, especially once stability in the zone improved,” he said. On Thursday, Defense Minister Carme Chacon announced that some 630 Spanish troops with the NATO-led KFOR force would be leaving in stages by August. (AFP)