NICOSIA (AFP) – UN special envoy Alexander Downer said yesterday that prospects of a deal to reunify Cyprus after 34 years of division are looking better now than for some time. “Developments over the past months have fostered a genuine sense that prospects have perhaps never been better to achieve a comprehensive settlement favorable to all Cypriots,” Downer told a news conference. “There is a good framework for taking this forward... it’s looking quite promising but there is no doubt that this is a difficult process.” Downer, on his first trip since being appointed special envoy on July 12, made his comments after crisscrossing the UN-patrolled ceasefire line to meet Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat. The two leaders agreed on Friday to begin direct talks on September 3, after a stalemate that followed the Greek-Cypriot rejection of a UN peace plan in 2004.

ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s Constitutional Court failed to decide yesterday whether to ban the Islamist-rooted ruling party for undermining the country’s secular system, making a third day of deliberations necessary, a court official said. As the 11 judges continued to debate the case late into the evening, the official said the tribunal would reconvene today. “A verdict does not seem possible today. The court will meet again tomorrow,” Osman Can told reporters. The court has said it will meet on a daily basis until it reaches a verdict, without giving a time frame. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, stands accused of steering Turkey toward a hardline Islamist regime. Outlawing the AKP, which dominates parliament and is still the country’s most popular party, could spark political chaos, wreck Turkey’s EU accession bid and hit the economy, already shaken by global financial woes.

ZAGREB (AP) – A Jewish human rights organization called on Croatia’s president yesterday to condemn the organizers of a funeral for a former concentration camp commander, saying it turned into a celebration of his crimes. Dinko Sakic’s funeral was an “outrageous display of unrepentant racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israeli branch director Efraim Zuroff said in a letter addressed to President Stipe Mesic and faxed to The Associated Press. Sakic died at age 87 on July 20 while serving 20 years in prison for war crimes he committed while heading the infamous Jasenovac camp, the worst of about 40 camps run by the then Nazi puppet regime of Croatia. Mesic said in a statement that he had repeatedly condemned Nazi crimes, including Sakic’s. He said the funeral was used to glorify the World War II regime and expected the relevant authorities to investigate the case.

Bulgaria’s right-wing opposition yesterday launched a new no-confidence motion against the government over its much-criticized record fighting crime and corruption. The opposition accused the ruling center-left coalition of inflicting “irreparable material and moral damage to the country” after the European Union set financial sanctions on the country for not taking tough enough action over corruption. More than 800 million euros ($1.25 billion) of farming, road and regional development aid for Bulgaria has been frozen. (AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the Jewish state had resumed indirect talks with Syria in Turkey yesterday and called on Damascus to break with Iran in favor of a broader peace. Israel and Syria launched Turkish-mediated talks in May but have not yet agreed to hold face-to-face negotiations. “At a certain stage it will not be enough simply to make signals, no matter how positive they are,” Olmert said in a speech in Jerusalem, as his envoys began a fourth round of indirect talks with Syria. “Syria must decide between favoring Iran, partnership in the axis of evil and suffering international isolation, and peace, economic prosperity and a place among the family of nations,” Olmert said. (Reuters)

The Bosnian War Crimes court convicted seven Bosnian Serbs of genocide yesterday and gave them long prison sentences for their actions during the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. Four others were acquitted. Issuing their first sentence related to Europe’s worst massacre since World War II, judges at the war crimes court sent three of the former policemen to jail for 42 years, another three away for 40 years and one for 38 years. (AP)