U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday he will call an international conference on ending the division of Cyprus this year if leaders of the rival sides make "decisive" steps to overcome disputes.

He said the conference could be in April or May, but reported only "limited progress" from two days of talks this week with Demetris Christofias, head of the internationally recognized Greek-Cypriot government, and Turkish-Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu.

Turkish authorities found the remains of 23 people in a mass grave in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey on the former site of military police headquarters, Anatolia news agency reported Wednesday.

The first remains were discovered earlier this month, during an archeological dig in Ickale, in central Diyarbakir, where ruins of an ancient palace dating back to the 13th century were being excavated.

Baghdad hit out on Tuesday at alleged Turkish provocations after Ankara said it would speak out if sectarian conflict erupted in Iraq, in a dramatic worsening of tensions between the two neighbors.

Despite improving ties and increasing trade between the pair in recent years, the rhetoric between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become heated in the past two weeks as Iraq has grappled with a political crisis that has stoked sectarian tensions.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday slammed as discriminatory and racist a bill passed by the French Senate making denial of the Armenian genocide a crime.

"The proposal adopted in France is tantamount to discrimination, racism and violates freedom of thought," Erdogan said in the parliament during an address to his fellow deputies.

French senators have passed a bill outlawing the denial of Armenian genocide in 1915, with a seething Turkey slamming the move and warning of consequences while Armenia hailed a day "written in gold."

The French Senate on Monday approved, by 127 votes to 86, the measure which threatens with jail anyone in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide.

Turkey's foreign minister says his country will implement a new set of measures against France if its Senate passes a bill making it a crime to deny that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was a genocide.

Ahmet Davutoglu did not spell out the measures Turkey would take in response to the bill that will be debated Monday in the French Senate.

Turkey is ready to work with the United Nations if a humanitarian crisis develops in neighboring Syria after months of deadly political unrest, its foreign minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.

"We hope that before the situation reaches that stage, the Syrian administration will halt the unjust war it has waged against its own people and find ways to make peace with its people," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Four Bulgarian nationals were killed and 26 people were injured in a bus crash in Turkey close to the Bulgarian border, the foreign ministry in Sofia said Sunday.

The crash occurred Saturday evening as the bus, which belonged to a Turkish company registered in Bulgaria, was travelling from Istanbul to Silistra in northeastern Bulgaria, the ministry said in a statement.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has cancelled a Brussels visit Monday in order to follow the French Senate's vote on a bill criminalizing the denial of Armenian genocide, a spokesman said.

"We decided to postpone this trip in order to stay in Turkey, regardless of the outcome of the vote at the French Senate," the ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged "reason and dialogue" in the row with Turkey on the Armenian genocide, in a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seen by Agence France Presse Friday.

"I hope we can make reason prevail and maintain our dialogue, as befits allied and friendly countries," Sarkozy wrote after Erdogan's government reacted strongly to a bill criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide under Ottoman Turkish rule, which the French Senate will debate on Monday.