ANKARA (AFP) - The head of Turkey's ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, faces no legal obstacle to stand in a March 9 election re-run in a tiny southeastern province, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said yesterday. Erdogan, who was legally barred from running in the November 3 general elections due to a conviction for Islamist sedition, is eager to win a parliamentary seat and then become prime minister. «It will become clear in the next few days whether he will be a candidate or not, but there is no constitutional or other legal obstacle for him,» Cicek said in an interview with CNN-Turk television.

SKOPJE (AP) - Police in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on Saturday denied allegations of ethnically motivated police brutality made by a leading international human rights group. Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska acknowledged that there have been cases of police «overstepping their authority,» but claimed such incidents have not involved torture. On Friday, Amnesty International accused FYROM of continued police brutality, particularly against members of ethnic minorities. Also critical of the Amnesty International report was Mirjana Najceska from the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in FYROM. She said the report is «unobjective and unprofessional.»

The Kosovo Serb coalition Povratak (Return) has decided to return to the provincial assembly three months after staging a walkout following complaints of Albanian domination in the Parliament, reports said on Saturday. The 22 deputies of the coalition Povratak decided to return to Kosovo's assembly at a meeting held Friday in Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, reports from Belgrade and Pristina said. «We will be back for the next session of the parliament on February 6,» the head of the Povratak parliamentary club, Dragisa Krstovic, said. (AFP)

A theme park dedicated to the legendary vampire Count Dracula is to be built near the Romanian capital rather than deep in Transylvania, where it was originally planned, a tourism official said yesterday. According to a feasibility study carried out by international auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the park would attract more than a million tourists a year if it were located near the Romanian capital, compared to just 600,000 visitors if it were built in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara, the initial location planned for the park. (AP)