*Kurds protest after being blocked from reaching Turkey 

BUDAPEST, March 20 (AFP) A group of some 150 Kurds protested outside the Romanian embassy in Budapest Wednesday saying they had been subject to "physical and psychological pressure" when they were blocked from travelling through Romania.
The group were among some 250 Kurds ordered back into Hungary after being stopped for over 24 hours at the Hungarian-Romanian border at Nadlac, said an official of the Kurdistan Information and Cultural Office, Ahce Nureddin.

The group included parliamentary deputies from Belgium and Germany, he said.

Heading for the Bulgarian-Turkish border to join in a protest in favour of using the Kurdish language in Turkey, the Kurds said they were "victims of physical and psychological pressure before being sent back into Hungary".

Some 100 Kurds mounted an impromptu protest in Bulgaria after they were stopped from joining the demonstration and turned back 70 kilometresmiles) from the border, according to Bulgarian police.

A coach and a dozen cars carrying Kurds from Bulgaria and Greece, who had set off from Sofia to join the protest that morning, were refused entry to the southern Bulgarian region of Haskovo.

They mounted an impromptu demonstration against the death sentence and in favour of the use of the Kurdish language in education and the media in Turkey, Dimiar Avramov, head of the Kurdish Cultural Centre in Bulgaria, told 

Six coaches carrying the group of 250 Kurds that had been stopped at the Hungarian-Romanian border arrived there on Monday evening and were initially given authorization to travel through Romania to Bulgaria, en route to Turkey.

But after the first coach was allowed through, the Romanian government said it was informed by the Bulgarian government that Sofia had banned the Kurds from crossing its territory.

The Kurds were therefore blocked at Nadlac, where they were put under close surveillance by some 250 military police.

"They spent the night in no man's land between the Hungarian and the Romanian border points. They then returned to Budapest and are currently heading towards Hegyeshalom" on the Austrian border, said Sandor Orodan, spokesman for Hungary's national border guard.

"The Romanian state was not too benevolent. The Kurds, after all, were peaceful. The members of the group were not even allowed to use a toilet for 12 hours. The Romanian move was illegal," Ahce said.

Hungarian authorities said there was no reason to block the group from travelling.

"Hungarian border guard authorities work under effective international laws. We saw no reason to refuse their entry, then re-entry to Hungary. They had valid passports," said Orodan.

But Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passi protested that "Bulgaria cannot become a territory for demonstrations against any one of its neighbouring countries".

The affair, which comes during a visit by Turkey's Interior Minister Rustu Kazim Yucelen to Bucharest, risks embarrassing the Romanian government notably because it is counting on Turkish support to be invited to join NATO later this year.