ANKARA (AFP) – A Turkish court yesterday charged three railway workers with negligence over a train accident on the weekend that killed nine people, the Anatolia news agency reported. The court in the western city of Kutahya, near where the accident happened, charged the workers responsible for line maintenance with “causing the deaths of several people through negligence” and jailed them pending trial, it said. In Sunday’s accident, a train, which set out from Istanbul with 436 passengers, derailed near Kutahya, about 300 kilometers (185 miles) from its destination.

ANKARA (AP) – Turkey has criticized US Democratic presidential hopefuls for backing Armenian views that a century-old mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks constituted a genocide. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement over the weekend that remarks by Democratic presidential candidates “for the sake of an internal party struggle, offends the Turkish nation.” The statement did not name specific candidates.

A pipe carrying oil and salt water spilled yesterday, sending hundreds of liters (200 gallons) gushing into a river in southern Romania, and polluting water for 15 kilometers (9.4 miles), authorities said. The pipe, which belongs to Petrom SA, ruptured along the Sabar River early yesterday near the town of Leordeni, spilling some 400 liters (106 gallons) of oil and 500 liters (132 gallons) of salt water into the river, said Marius Postelnicu, a water official for Arges county. (AP)

Prime Minister Ivo Sanader voiced hope yesterday that Croatia would be invited to eventually join NATO in April, after making every effort to gain admission. “We hope that through the activities of the next two months, we will do everything to receive an invitation for NATO” membership, Sanader said after meeting with President Stipe Mesic on the issue. (AFP)

Police yesterday arrested three ethnic Serbs on suspicion of committing war crimes during the conflict that gripped Bosnia in the early 1990s, a local court said. The three were detained in the eastern town of Vlasenica on suspicion of committing war crimes against Muslim civilians at a detention camp, prosecutors of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said in a statement. Their alleged crimes took place at the Susica camp and around Vlasenica in 1992, the year Serb forces killed and expelled almost all Muslims and Croats from eastern Bosnia during their “ethnic cleansing” campaign. (AFP)

French President Nicholas Sarkozy will address Romania’s parliament during a one-day visit on February 4, as lawmakers debate and ratify the new European Union treaty, officials said yesterday. Sarkozy will meet with President Traian Basescu and Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu during his visit, the first since he became president. (AP)