TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran’s embattled President Mohammad Khatami has telephoned Turkey’s president and prime minister in a bid to ease the diplomatic fallout of his dispute with the Islamic republic’s hardliners over foreign investment, state media reported yesterday. Khatami had been due to travel to Turkey today, but was forced to make an embarrassing last-minute postponement after the conservative-run Iranian Parliament threw into doubt two major contracts signed with Turkish companies. “While I respect bilateral relations between our two nations, I also have high regard for the decision of the Majlis and view my acceptance of such a decision as a token to democracy,” Khatami was quoted as explaining.

BANJA LUKA (AFP) - Bosnian-Serb President Dragan Cavic yesterday accused the Muslim chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency Sulejman Tihic of undermining the country’s fragile interethnic stability with his call for constitutional amendments. “With such statements, Tihic is recalling the situation from 1992,” when Bosnia’s three-and-a-half-year-long war started, Cavic told local media. “It is an extremely dangerous message for both Republika Srpska and Bosnian Serbs.” Tihic said before the UN General Assembly last week that the time was coming for local officials to start talks on changing Bosnia’s constitution.

Russian special forces who killed five people during an operation in the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya found that one of them was carrying Turkish identity papers, a military spokesman said, describing the dead man as a “mercenary.” General Ilya Shabalkin, regional chief of staff of Russian “anti-terrorist operations,” said the alleged Turk was one of five rebels killed during an operation on Sunday near the village of Serzhen-Yurt in the Shali region of southeastern Chechnya. (AFP)

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale shook southern Romania and was felt in the capital Bucharest yesterday, but no injuries or damage were reported, officials said. The Earth Physics Institute said the tremor, which occurred at 09:16 GMT in the Vrancea region, some 250 kilometers (160 miles) northeast of Bucharest, lasted about four seconds. (Reuters)