Balkan News

ATHENS, Greece Athens and Nicosia have reacted sharply to Turkey’s decision authorising the Turkish Petroleum Corporation to launch an oil exploration project in the Mediterranean Sea, Greek media reported on Monday (July 20th). Last week, Ankara announced that a Turkish vessel will start exploring hydrocarbon resources in four areas off …

ATHENS, Greece The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday (July 17th) it is suspending its participation in advisory committees examining asylum requests in Greece to protest newly adopted rules on granting asylum.

A year after the wartime president of Republika Srpska was arrested, war victims and legal analysts in Bosnia say it is high time for his trial to begin. Exactly one year since the arrest of Radovan Karadzic in Belgrade, it is still unknown when his trial, considered by many as …

According to the latest survey done by the US-based International Republican Institute, IRI, Macedonian citizens, on average, give their country 6.2 years to enter the European Union. Therefore, they expect Macedonia to enter the EU sometime in 2015.Public support for Macedonia’s NATO entrance remains high at around 93 percent, the …

Civilian possession of illicit weapons remains a serious problem in Kosovo and the region, Saferworld said in a press conference in Pristina on Tuesday. According to a new Saferworld report, around 350,000 illicit small arms and light weapons remain in private possession in households across the country. Kosovo is currently …

The Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) religious leadership and media and many European officials and politicians warn that the EU’s visa-liberalisation plan could lead to the radicalisation of Muslims in Europe and seriously destabilize the entire region. “Bosniaks feel squeezed into a corner from which they do not see a way out. …

Tensions are running high in Mostar, in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, following the murder of a member of a local radical Muslim Wahhabi sect. “The town is still tense,” Mostar journalist Mirsad Behram told Balkan Insight on Monday. Local police are continuing their investigation into the incident, which took place …

Macedonia will present evidence against neighbouring Greece to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, ICJ, on Monday.At the end of last year, the country submitted a complaint against Greece for breaching a 1995 UN-brokered Interim Accord on the “name” row. The prolonged row escalated when Athens, a veteran …

SOFIA Outgoing U.S. ambassador Nancy McEldowney has committed to the continuation of the strategic partnership between Bulgaria and the U.S. At a ceremony in Bulgarian Defense Ministry she was awarded an honorary plaque Saint Georgi, first class.

SOFIA Bulgaria’s President Georgi Parvanov has conferred high state honors – Stara Planina order, first class – on Serbian and Dutch ambassadors in Bulgaria Danilo Vucetic and Willem van Ee for their contribution to the development of bilateral relations.