BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's conservatives fear a European Union dominated by Turkey if the mainly Muslim nation enters the bloc but will not overplay the issue before Germany's general election, a senior conservative said yesterday. The center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), favorites to win the September 18 snap election, are fierce opponents of full European Union membership for Turkey. «Turkey would now be the second most important country in a European Union and in a few years... Turkey would be the leading nation, more than France, Italy or Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal and Greece together,» Guenther Beckstein, interior minister for the CDU-led state of Bavaria, told a group of Reuters reporters yesterday. «That would be hard to imagine.»

BUCHAREST (AP) - Severe flooding hit parts of central and eastern Europe yesterday, leaving more than 20 dead, causing landslides and closing roads. In Romania, new storms and flooding left 18 people dead in the last week. Twelve drowned and six were struck by lightning. The latest victims were a husband and wife in northeast Romania who drowned when a small bridge they were crossing collapsed. In Turkey, floods collapsed tents housing agricultural workers. Two 12-year-olds drowned after being washed away by a flooded creek in the town of Cadirardic, in Yozgat province.

A UN envoy said yesterday that more work is needed to improve tense relations between Kosovo's Serbs and ethnic Albanians before talks can begin on the contested province's future status. Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat, met yesterday with officials in Belgrade who also expressed concern over the situation in Kosovo. Eide was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June to review Kosovo's progress in meeting UN-set targets on democracy and civil rights for the province's minority Serbs. «More needs to be done in Kosovo, not only on better ethnic relations, but also about the rule of law in Kosovo,» Eide said after his talks with Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic. (AP)

A suspect was killed and two policemen injured in clashes in northeastern Turkey overnight as police tried to track down three suspects following a tip-off, the semi-official Anatolia news agency said yesterday. The report identified the victim only as a «terrorist,» the term officials use to refer to rebels from the main Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) or leftist extremists, though Kurdish rebels are not generally active in the northeast of the country. Police surrounded a supermarket after a tip-off that three suspects were inside, touching off a clash in which one police officer was injured, the agency said. (AFP)

Four people were killed in a landslide triggered by heavy rain in the Black Sea province of Rize in northeast Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported, citing the local governor. «Unfortunately the landslide caused four deaths,» the governor, Enver Salihoglu, told the news agency. The bodies of the victims, three from the same family, were found buried under their housing, Salihoglu added. (AFP)