Balkans

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – A couple of hundred ethnic Serb protesters took over a United Nations court in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica in north Kosovo on Friday after U.N. police guarding the compound retreated.

PRISTINA (Reuters) – U.N. authorities in Kosovo told Serbia on Wednesday to stop interfering in Serb areas of the new state, where a Serb boycott has fuelled speculation Belgrade is trying to partition the territory.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s government is in deep crisis, nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Friday, accusing his pro-Western coalition partners of giving up on defending Serbia’s claim to Kosovo.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The United Nation’s new war crimes prosecutor called on Friday for the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two top war crimes suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and Serbia is damaging its own interests by not accepting it, former U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari said.

PRISTINA (Reuters) – The United States on Friday condemned Serb “provocations” in Kosovo and rejected Russian suggestions its Western-backed declaration of independence left the new country destined for partition.

LJUBLJANA (Reuters) – Current European Union president Slovenia became the first former Yugoslav republic to recognize Kosovo’s independence from Serbia on Wednesday.

An offhand comment by President Vladimir Putin during his recent swing through the North Caucasus should have alerted both Russians and the world of a very serious problem: Besides some speeches and press releases filled with bravado, Moscow has done very little to prepare for the Sochi Olympics.

Russia’s gas export monopoly Gazprom threatened on Tuesday to cut gas supplies to Ukraine by 25 percent from March 3 over arrears, two weeks after the two ex-Soviet states agreed on how to settle the problem.

BAKU – Azeri President Ilham Aliyev has asked parliament to vote to withdraw the ex-Soviet country’s peacekeepers from Kosovo, an Azeri official said on Thursday.