ANKARA (AFP) - The Turkish government is expected to reintroduce in Parliament a draft amnesty bill for Kurdish rebels next week after it was withdrawn because opposition lawmakers blocked a key article, parliamentary sources said yesterday. The bill ran into unexpected trouble in Wednesday’s session after the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) raised procedural objections to an article providing outright pardons for Kurdish militants who surrender and who have not committed any violent crimes. At a meeting yesterday, the commission wove the rejected provision back into the bill without any modifications in a bid to push it through Parliament again next week — the final week before the summer recess which lasts until October.

SARAJEVO(AFP) - Forensics experts have uncovered two mass graves in eastern Bosnia containing 80 bodies, all believed to be of Muslim civilians killed by Bosnian-Croat forces during the country’s 1992-1995 war, an official said yesterday. "We exhumed 80 bodies including that of a 40-day-old baby and an 80-year-old man,” Amor Masovic, head of the Bosnian Muslim commission for missing people, told AFP. The victims are believed to be Muslim civilians from the eastern Bosnian town of Zepce killed by the Bosnian-Croat army during the 1993 conflict between Muslims and Croats there. The bodies were found in 15-meter-long (49.5-feet-long) trenches dug at two cemeteries in the region of Zepce at the distance of some 6 kilometers (4 miles) from one another, Masovic said. One contained 76 and the other four bodies.

NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia said yesterday that they and local police were investigating an incident in which troops allegedly severely beat a Muslim invalid whom they suspected of videotaping them. The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) is investigating the incident in which a group of peacekeepers “briefly detained” a resident of the northeastern town of Kalesija “suspected of videotaping an SFOR patrol,” an SFOR statement said. But Hatidza Sahbazovic accused US troops serving with the peacekeepers of severely beating her invalid husband Bajro — who lost his leg and arm during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war — in front of their house on Wednesday. Sahbazovic said SFOR soldiers drove into her street while Bajro was testing an amateur video camera on his balcony. (AFP)

Albania’s president accepted two nominations for government posts yesterday amid a crisis over how to best revive the economy of one of Europe’s poorest countries. President Alfred Moisiu approved Prime Minister Fatos Nano’s choices and sent the matter to Parliament for final approval. Nano nominated Marko Bello as foreign minister and Ermelinda Meksi as deputy prime minister and minister in charge of efforts to win membership in the European Union. If approved by Parliament, they will replace Ilir Meta, the former foreign minister and Sokol Nako, the former integration minister. (AP)