Balkans

Khaled El Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin who claims he was kidnapped by the CIA during his stay in Skopje in 2003, filed a second lawsuit against Macedonia on Monday. El Masri says that Macedonian police assisted the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency in kidnapping and transferring him …

Efforts by Tirana to dismiss an Albanian deputy in the assembly of the Council of Europe, CoE, have temporarily frozen Albania’s voting rights and created a political storm at home Albania’s parliament speaker, Jozefina Topalli, asked the CoE in a letter to replace Aleksander Biberaj, currently the deputy head of …

Leaders of Bosnia’s three strongest ethnic parties on Monday agreed on what appears to be a new administrative and territorial setup for the troubled Balkan country. The agreement envisages the country divided in four rather than the current two regions set up at the end of the 1992-95 war between …

he VMRO DPMNE party of Macedonia Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski picked Georgi Ivanov, a political science professor at Skopje University, as its candidate in the March 22 presidential election. Ivanov, a political newcomer but a personal favorite of many senior VMRO officials, captured the overwhelming majority of delegates at the …

Serbia’s dinar currency hit a record low on Monday, with its official middle exchange rate at 95.4564 dinars to the euro, a drop of some seven percent this year. Other emerging market currencies such as Hungary’s forint, Romania’s leu and Poland’s lek have suffered since the onset of the global …

Macedonia’s main opposition party, the Social Democrats, on Monday proposed university professor and former Foreign Minister Ljubomir Frckoski as the party’s candidate for the March 22 presidential election. The party will formalize Frckoski’s candidacy on a convention later during the day, Social Democrats acting President Zoran Zaev told reporters at …

Serbia will never make it into the European Union if it keeps trying to sabotage Kosovo’s newly-declared independence and territorial integrity, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said in an interview. In an interview with Austrian daily Der Standard, Thaci said Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia last February, wanted “good …

Kosovo’s public servants and pensioners will get a pay rise next month, with civil servants receiving a 10 percent increase, while pensioners, people on social assistance and war veterans and their families will get a 12 percent increase. Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the hike is in accordance with …

Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic will meet Dutch officials in Brussels on Monday in a bid to “unblock Serbia’s European path”, with the goal of starting EU membership talks in early 2010. The Netherlands refuse to allow an interim trade deal – part of the suspended Stabilisation and Association Agreement …

Albanian officials from the Presevo region in southern Serbia have sent a letter of protest to Belgrade demanding the immediate release of a group of ethnic Albanians accused of war crimes against Serbs, as well as the pullout of Serbian special security forces from the area. The 10 men were …