The Libya contact group recognized Friday the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) as the country's "legitimate governmental authority," according to a statement seen by Agence France Presse.

The group of major Western and regional powers also urged "all relevant parties" to make efforts "for the formation of an interim government to ensure a smooth and peaceful transition of power," said the statement, to be formally issued at the end of a meeting in Istanbul later Friday.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wednesday unveiled Turkey's new cabinet after his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a third straight term in power in the June 12 elections.

Apart from Erdogan, the line-up included 25 ministers, both outgoing cabinet members and newcomers.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wednesday unveiled Turkey's new cabinet after his Islamist-rooted party won a third straight term in power in the June 12 elections.

The line-up included 25 ministers, both outgoing cabinet members and newcomers, Erdogan told a press conference after President Abdullah Gul approved the list.

Two soldiers were shot dead Tuesday in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in an attack believed to be the work of Kurdish rebels, security sources said.

The soldiers, wearing civilian clothes, came under fire while walking on the main street of Yuksekova town, a hotbed of Kurdish militancy in the province of Hakkari, which borders Iran and Iraq, the sources said.

Separatist Kurdish rebels opened fire on a military vehicle in eastern Turkey, killing a soldier and wounding three others, Anatolia news agency reported Monday.

The vehicle came under attack from militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in a rural area in Van province, the report said.

A Turkish court has charged four soldiers over an alleged 2003 plot to overthrow the Islamist-rooted government and ordered them detained pending trial, Anatolia news agency reported Saturday.

Two-star admiral Mucahit Sislioglu, a colonel, and two other soldiers were questioned Friday and then charged as part of an expanding probe into a purported coup plot, codenamed "Operation Sledgehammer," that has already landed some 200 soldiers in court.

A leading Kurdish politician warned Turkey of renewed bloodshed Wednesday after the authorities stripped a prominent Kurdish activist of his seat in parliament, Anatolia news agency reported.

"This is a decision to drag Turkey into chaos... to push our people into an environment of conflict," Ahmet Turk, head of a Kurdish umbrella organization, said in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish-majority southeast.

Israel and Turkey have been holding secret talks at several levels to end their diplomatic crisis, Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday, quoting a senior Israeli official.

The report, for which there was no confirmation, said an official representing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Feridun Sinirlioglu, undersecretary at the Turkish foreign ministry, were involved in the discussions.

Thousands of supporters of Bashar Assad demonstrated Wednesday on the outskirts of Damascus as the embattled president came under intense world pressure to halt a crackdown on democracy protests.

Flag-waving pro-regime demonstrators lined a highway leading to the posh residential suburb of al-Mezze in western Damascus where a huge flag measuring 2.3 kilometers was unfurled, state television showed.

An envoy of Syrian President Bashar Assad was to hold talks on Wednesday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been urging the Damascus regime to halt its crackdown on protesters.

Erdogan would host afternoon talks with Hassan Turkmani in Ankara on "the developments in Syria", a government source told Agence France Presse.