ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated yesterday his criticism of comments made by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam, which sparked Muslim protests, and said that even a politician would not have spoken in such a way. “The pope is both a political and religious figure. But this person spoke in a way that is unfitting even for us politicians,” Erdogan told an economic conference in Istanbul. Erdogan described the comments at the time as “ugly and unfortunate” and called for a papal apology. “We love Jesus and Moses as much as our own prophet. Nobody should try to meddle with our religion. The pope made this mistake,” Erdogan said.

PRISTINA (Reuters) - The breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo is not stable and its future must be resolved this year, a United States envoy said yesterday. “We must move ahead now,” US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried told reporters in the provincial capital Pristina. “The present situation is not inherently stable,” he said after meeting with leaders of Kosovo’s pro-independence ethnic Albanian majority.“The people of Kosovo deserve greater clarity and, as we approach the end of the year, I suspect they will get greater clarity,” he added.

Mladic aides. Ten people accused of helping Bosnian-Serb wartime military chief Ratko Mladic evade capture went on trial yesterday, as Serbian authorities sought to show willingness to aid the international war crimes court. The 10 are charged with aiding and sheltering Mladic, the Bosnian-Serb military chief during the former Yugoslav republic’s 1992-1995 war, who is wanted on war crimes charges by a UN court based in The Hague. (AFP)

Bosnian-Croat computer programmers have launched a computer game inviting players to “kill” off virtual presidential candidates, just days before Bosnia holds general elections. The group of programmers, who call themselves Erohakermen, said they created the online game “Kill the Presidential Candidate” “because Bosnian-Croat politicians cannot agree on one Croat candidate for the presidency,” according to a report yesterday on Internet news site Pincom.info. Bosnia holds elections Sunday for Parliament as well as for the three-member presidency, with one representative for each ethnic group: Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks and Orthodox Serbs. (AP)

A court yesterday threw out a case against a Kurdish mayor prosecuted for allowing a public ambulance to transport the body of a Kurdish rebel killed in fighting with the army, Anatolia reported. Osman Baydemir, the mayor of Diyarbakir, the central city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, had risked a one-year jail term in the case. He argued in his defense that he had acted with humanitarian considerations and did not cause financial losses to the municipality as the prosecution charged. The judge ruled that the alleged offense had not taken place, acquitting Baydemir and three of his aides who were also on trial. (AFP)