ANKARA - Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit left hospital yesterday after an 11-day stay that sparked speculation about early elections that might endanger Turkey’s recovery from a deep economic crisis. Ecevit, who turns 77 today, was admitted to hospital on May 17 with a cracked rib and phlebitis, after another hospital stay for an intestinal infection about two weeks earlier. “I am fine and I am on duty,” a smiling Ecevit said after leaving hospital to the applause of party supporters. He dismissed his hospitalization as “unimportant” and said some minor problems remained with his leg and foot. (AFP)

ANKARA - More than 40,000 people have been released from Turkey’s prisons under an amnesty that is also likely to lead to the early release of the gunman who shot Pope John Paul II, reports said yesterday. Some 11,500 convicted murderers, 11,300 thieves or armed robbers and 1,100 people convicted of certain sex offenses have been freed since 2000, when Turkey first enacted an amnesty that reduces sentences by 10 years, the Milliyet newspaper quoted Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk as saying. Another 5,000 people are likely to be released in the coming months after the government was forced this month to expand the amnesty after a court ruling that some prisoners had been unfairly left out. (AP)

A Bosnian-Serb suspect arrested by police in Serbia over the weekend has denied war crimes charges in an indictment issued against him by the Hague tribunal, a Belgrade judge said yesterday. Serbian police on Saturday arrested Ranko Cesic, a Bosnian Serb charged with killing at least 12 victims in northern Bosnia in 1992. It was the first arrest of a suspect after the Belgrade government recently decided to cooperate with the UN court. (AP)

Responding to allegations that Abdullah Ocalan is receiving special treatment in prison, the Turkish justice minister said the State spends only 1.8 million Turkish lira ($1.20) a day to feed the Kurdish rebel leader. Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk said the food money is standard for prisoners in Turkey. (AP)

Crisis-hit Turkey is expecting large-scale foreign direct investment in the near future, hoping that IMF-backed economic reforms will boost investor confidence, Economy Minister Kemal Dervis said yesterday. “I think in the next two to three years, foreign investments on an unprecedented scale will be really possible in Turkey,” Dervis told reporters after a meeting in Istanbul with leading European industrialists. However, he said the business representatives, members of the influential European Round Table of Industrials (ERT) group, had doubts over Turkey’s ability to sustain the implementation of reforms and were concerned that political instability could derail the recovery. (AFP)

Bulgarian police have arrested a man who phoned in a bomb threat during Pope John Paul II’s visit and are trying to track down another, Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry said yesterday. The man who called in the threat Sunday morning admitted that he had wanted to cause panic when he said that a bomb had been planted in the central square in Plovdiv where the pope led church services, said Interior Ministry official Boiko Borissov. A second man who called in a bomb threat to police in Dupnitza on Saturday remained at large. (AFP)