BUCHAREST The preservation of military monuments and cemeteries in Bulgaria and Romania will be subject to a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Currently, the departments in charge harmonize the document, Bulgarian ambassador to Romania Valentin Radomirski said.

The European Union will unblock part of the frozen funds for Bulgaria at the beginning of next week, the German newspaper Die Welt reported on Sunday. The European Commission is expected to unfreeze the first tranche of EUR 115 M under ISPA programs for infrastructure projects, which aim to improve …

A powerful Croatian politician, who was sentenced by a Croatian court in the first instance to 10 years in prison for murdering Serbs during the 1992-95 wars, is hiding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, media in the region reported on Monday. After four years of complicated investigations and trials, a Zagreb …

Kosovo Police said that ten policemen were injured on Sunday as around 300 Serbs threw stones at them in protest to electricity cuts. The protests began at the eastern village of Gjilane/Gnjilane, when police say protesters gathered and blocked the Gjilane/Gnjilane-Bujanovac road. For the past three days several Serb inhabited …

Maritime law experts contacted by Balkan Insight have questioned the accuracy of local media reports of a land grab by Greece of Albanian territory, after the two neighbours signed an agreement to delineate the continental shelf in the Ionian Sea. The agreement signed by Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and …

The right-of-centre Macedonian Government is waging an “undeclared war against the Albanian option”, the head of the ethnic Albanian opposition said. Menduh Thaci, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, made the remarks at a session of DPA’s branch in the town of Debar, local Makfax news …

Turkey’s EU negotiator said on Friday Ankara would push ahead with long-delayed reforms to join the bloc, including on tax and amending the constitution, now the country has a two to three year period without elections. Turkey began accession talks in 2005, but progress has been slow. The European Union …

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday he was pleased with the prospects offered by a European Union summit with six ex-Soviet republics even though he stayed away from the event. “Judging from the information I received, things ended up as we thought,” Lukashenko, quoted by the official BELTA news …

Although Croatia has adopted the proposal of European Union expansion commissioner Olli Rehn on resolving the border dispute between Croatia and Slovenia, an agreement cannot be reached without Slovenia, which has still not submitted its official response to the European Commission. Slovene Foreign Affairs Minster Samuel Zbogar said that Rehn …

Loyalty to a common historical heritage could help mend ties between ex-Soviet Georgia and Russia damaged by a brief war last August, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Georgian World War Two veterans on Friday. In a special message to the veterans, Medvedev recalled the Soviet Union’s role during the war …