ANKARA (AP) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday began a two-day trip to Turkey, where he is expected to discuss the country’s reforms in preparation for its seeking entry to the EU. Ahead of his visit, Schroeder assured Turkish leaders that membership negotiations with the Union would start as scheduled on October 3, but warned that the country must not go back on reforms.

SOFIA (AP) - Two Bulgarian soldiers died yesterday in a car crash in Iraq, the Defense Ministry said. The accident happened at 11.30 a.m. local time when a Bulgarian military convoy was on its way from Kuwait to the city of Diwaniya, where the Bulgarian battalion is based. The ministry blamed bad weather for the crash.

A boat carrying illegal migrants from Mauritania and Somalia to Greece capsized yesterday off the coast of Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported. One migrant was missing, and 19 migrants and the Turkish captain swam ashore, the agency reported. The Turkish coast guard was searching for the missing migrant in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Aliaga in western Turkey. (AP)

Bosnian-Serb General Vinko Pandurevic pleaded not guilty yesterday to war crimes charges linked to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys. “Pandurevic planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a planned and organized mass execution of thousands of captured Bosnian Muslim men,” the indictment reads. (Reuters)

Germany will issue a 16.7-million-euro (US $21.5 million) loan to help Albania improve water supply networks in two southeastern towns, the Albanian Finance Ministry said yesterday. The ministry signed the deal yesterday with Germany’s government-owned KfW Bank to fund upgrades to the water supply systems in Pogradec and Korca. (AP)

Doctors say a 67-year-old Serbian woman, who claimed she was expecting her first baby, is not pregnant, a news agency reported yesterday. Zlatija Jovic, from the village of Gornje Brijanje in central Serbia, last week told a local television station that she expected to give birth in July — raising the possibility of a record for her age. (AP)

Romanian Foreign Minister Razvan Ungureanu was leaving yesterday for a three-day visit to the United States aimed at “giving fresh impetus to strategic relations” between the countries, his office said. Ungureanu is due to meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as her two predecessors Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. (AFP)

Romania’s government will set up a task force to fight tax evasion, contraband and illegal labor practices, officials said yesterday. The task force will coordinate the work of agencies operating under Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Finance and the Labor Ministry. (AP)