TEHRAN (AP) - Turkey’s top diplomat arrived in Tehran late Saturday to relay a message of reconciliation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of efforts to help solve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters in Ankara that he was carrying a message from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging Tehran to cooperate with the international community to eliminate concerns over its nuclear program. At Tehran’s airport, Gul said Turkey was pushing for a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear dispute, state-run television reported yesterday. “Turkey believes the diplomatic resolution of this issue can help maintain stability in the region,” state television quoted him as saying.

SKOPJE (AFP) - A senior ethnic Albanian leader has been shot and injured in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) just two weeks ahead of general elections in the Balkan republic, officials said Saturday. Abdulhalim Kasami, 51, was shot and wounded late Friday in front of his house in the western town of Tetovo, police sources told AFP. Kasami is an ally of Ali Ahmeti, the main leader of the restive ethnic Albanian minority in FYROM, and a member of Ahmeti’s Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) which is in the ruling coalition. His wounds were not life-threatening, said DUI official Heaved Ademi.

A Turkish museum director said Saturday she had started procedures to recover precious Ottoman ceramics stolen here at the end of the 19th century and rediscovered in Paris museums. ”A file has been opened on the case to enable the (Culture) Ministry to recover stolen ceramics which have been discovered in the Decorative Arts Museum in Sevres (France) and the Louvre Museum in Paris,” the Anatolia news agency quoted Hagia Sophia museum head Jale Dedeoglu as saying. (AFP)

Serbia’s prime minister will summon representatives of the country’s security services next week over their failure to capture top UN war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic, a top government official said yesterday. Finance Minister Mladjan Dinkic said efforts to arrest Mladic and hand him over to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague will top the agenda of next week’s Cabinet meeting. (AP)

The Netherlands yesterday extradited to Croatia its former soldier who had been sentenced to 12 years in jail for war crimes committed during the 1990s Serbo-Croatian war, police said. “Munib Suljic was escorted in the afternoon by Interpol officials on a regular flight from Amsterdam to Zagreb,” Interior Ministry spokesman Zlatko Mehun told the HINA news agency. (AFP)