Balkans

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – A delay in inviting Macedonia to join NATO could encourage radicals and fuel instability in the Balkans, Albania’s prime minister said, urging compromise to allow a last-minute deal at an alliance summit on Wednesday.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – President George W. Bush urged NATO allies on Wednesday to send more troops to Afghanistan, but France distanced itself from expectations in the alliance that it could deploy 1,000 extra soldiers.

PRISTINA (Reuters) – Serbia said on Monday it would conduct its May elections in the former Kosovo province as well, in a fresh challenge to the newly independent state and its international overseers.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will send humanitarian aid to Kosovo’s Serb-populated enclaves in early April, a Russian diplomat said on Monday, saying Moscow had not coordinated the move with the region’s ethnic Albanian leadership.

NIKOLSKOE, Russia (Reuters) – A Russian doomsday cult sheltering in a bunker say credit cards and food packaging bar codes are satanic, the official negotiating the release of children from the group said on Monday.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Once a laggard among former Soviet allies in joining the European Union and NATO, Romania hopes the military alliance’s summit in Bucharest this week will earn the Black Sea state a bigger role in southeastern Europe.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia has proposed a plan for the “functional division of Serbs and Kosovo Albanians” in Kosovo, Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic was quoted on Saturday as saying.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s neighbors in Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria dealt a blow to the Serb campaign to overturn Kosovo’s month-old independence on Wednesday by announcing they would recognize the new republic.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – U.N. police in Kosovo returned to the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica on Wednesday with heavy NATO support, having pulled out two days ago after deadly riots by Serbs opposed to secession.

ATHENS (Reuters) – Serbia appealed to nations on Wednesday not to recognize the month-old republic of Kosovo, saying the breakaway state was part of its territory.