DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) - Turkish security forces have killed 15 guerrillas from the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and seized a number of arms and documents, security officials said yesterday. Security forces clashed with the rebels in a remote part of mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, north of the Iraqi border, during a military operation. The officials said the operation, with troops backed up by helicopters, was continuing.

BUCHAREST (AP) - Romania’s embattled prime minister has survived a no-confidence vote within his own Liberal Party, party officials said yesterday. Party delegates voted 63-7 late Tuesday to keep Calin Popescu Tariceanu as both party leader and prime minister. Tariceanu’s position has been in question since July 19, when he announced he would resign and call new elections — but then he abruptly reversed that decision, saying the country needed him to stay on and oversee rebuilding after devastating floods.

Bulgaria’s Parliament resumed work yesterday and decided to put the new Socialist-led cabinet to a secret ballot, after the vote was postponed Tuesday for lack of a quorum when opposition lawmakers walked out. Out of 239 deputies present in the resumed session, 120 declared themselves in favor of casting their ballot on the Socialist-led government in secret and 119 rejected the proposal. The new government, to be headed by Socialist leader Sergey Stanishev, includes 13 Socialist ministers and five from the Turkish minority party Movement for Rights and Freedoms. (AFP)

The UN complained yesterday of a shortfall in funding to help refugees return to Kosovo, despite international pressure for progress on the issue. “We have totally insufficient funds available,” said Killian Kleinschmidt, acting head of the returns office within the UN mission that has run Serbia’s southern province since 1999. New returns projects “require an additional 22 million euros, today,” he told reporters. Of an estimated 180,000 Serbs and other ethnic minorities who fled after the war, just 13,000 people have returned. (Reuters)

International officials slammed Bosnian-Serb political parties yesterday, saying they are obstructing police reforms designed to bring the country closer to joining the EU. Talks about unifying the police forces of the Bosnian-Serb republic and the Bosniak-Croat federation were supposed to resume Tuesday in Sarajevo. However, three major Bosnian-Serb parties failed to show up. (AP)