SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned on Friday that the failure of the European Union to eventually admit Turkey could have dire consequences. She said it was important that Turkey be admitted after it meets EU standards “because what we cannot afford to have is a divide between Turkey and the rest of Europe.” She said that “might look like what was once described as the clash of civilizations” between Muslim Turkey and Christian Europe. “That would be a very terrible thing,” she said.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iran and Turkey are to increase power exports to Iraq, a Baghdad official said on Saturday, as government figures showed that electricity output in the country plagued by cuts has worsened since the US-led invasion two years ago. “Iran has agreed to raise electricity exports to Iraq from 90 megawatts a day to 150, while Turkey will increase them from 150 to 230,” said Deputy Electricity Minister Raad al-Haris. The combined increases represent consumption by more than 100,000 homes and businesses in Iraq.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday tried to defuse a crisis over the squelching of a debate on the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire which has provoked concern in the EU. A landmark conference questioning the official line on the mass killings that had been due to open Wednesday at Istanbul’s prestigious Bogazici University was postponed after Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused the participants of “treason.” “Cemil Cicek is the spokesman of our government. He made a statement but not a statement of the government; it was a personal statement,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. (AFP)

Rescue workers were on Saturday searching for nine people who went missing after their bus plunged into a river in the eastern Turkish province of Kars, killing at least three people and injuring 35, a local official said. Kars Governor Nevzat Turhan said driver error was the likely cause of the accident in which the bus, traveling from Istanbul to the territory of Nakhchevan, which is part of Azerbaijan, failed to negotiate a turn, veered off the road and plunged into the Aras River. (AFP)

Turkey said Saturday that objects found in a field near the border with Syria shortly after an aerial explosion belonged to a Syrian missile fired due to a technical fault during military training exercises. Paramilitary troops found what they believed were missile parts after residents in the Golbasi and Mahmutlu villages in the southern province of Hatay said that objects had rained down on their fields on Friday after they heard an explosion in the sky. (AFP)