Syria has handed over to Turkey 22 people suspected of involvement in deadly suicide attacks in Istanbul, Anatolian news agency reported on Sunday, a day after another suspect was charged with seeking to topple the state. The suspects fled Turkey after last month's bombings in which 61 people died, the state-run agency said, quoting Turkish security services. Several of those detained were believed to have links with Azad Ekinci, who investigators suspect was a key planner of the attacks, the agency added. Ekinci is believed to have escaped from Turkey.
■ United States
Bishops pan gay marriage
Catholic bishops in Massachusetts on Sunday strongly denounced gay marriages in a letter read at church services on the first weekend of advent. The bishops described as a "national tragedy" a recent court ruling by the state's top court, in which same-sex marriages would be permitted. The ruling undermined marriage, which was a gift from God and the foundation of family and society, the bishops said, urging that marriage should not be redefined to include single-sex relationships.
The bishops demanded
an amendment to the Constitution which would stipulate that the term marriage be reserved for relationships between men and women.
■ Lithuania
Impeachment looms
Thousands of Lithuanians demonstrated in the capital on Sunday to demand the resignation of President Rolandas Paksas on the eve of a report expected to recommend impeachment in a corruption scandal. Demonstrators proceeded from Vilnius' central square towards the parliament in response to allegations that Paksas' office has links with the mafia. The protest
came after the head of the parliamentary committee probing the allegations, which have rocked the Baltic country six months before EU and NATO entry, said enough information had been received to lead to Paksas' impeachment when the committee published its findings yesterday.
■ United Kingdom
Irish PM optimistic on talks
Protestant hard-liners are right to criticize how Northern Ireland's previous power-sharing government worked and should negotiate to make the system work better next time, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Sunday. He said the victory of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party in elections last week for the Northern Ireland Assembly doesn't spell the end of efforts to forge a stable Protestant-Catholic government for the British territory. He said he expected multiparty negotiations to start next month. Ahern said he agreed that Northern Ireland's four-party administration had been chronically unstable.
■ Georgia
Elections chief named
Georgia's parliament on Sunday confirmed as the new election commission chairman the head of an organization that conducted independent monitoring of the fraudulent parliament vote that led to President Eduard Shevardnadze's removal from office. Zurab Chiaberashvili was confirmed with only one deputy voting against him. One of his main tasks will be to prevent fraud in the Jan. 4 vote to find a replacement for Shevardnadze, who resigned last week after pressure from thousands of protesters angered by the Nov. 2 election.
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