Balkans

Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta on Thursday unveiled the 2013 draft budget that targets 1.8-percent economic growth and a public deficit under 2.0 percent. “In 2013 our obligation is to put Romania back on the track of economic growth,” centre-left Ponta told a press conference. He added that his government, …

Bulgaria’s upcoming nuclear energy referendum will be “pointless” according to the country’s Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov. On January 27, Bulgarian citizens will have to answer the question “Should nuclear energy be developed in Bulgaria through the construction of a new nuclear power plant?” The referendum was initially triggered by the …

Officials have agreed to construct a memorial to Serbs killed by Bosnian Army troops while the capital was under siege in the 1990s.The monument to around 30 victims, mostly Serbs, killed in Sarajevo during 1992 and 1993 by a group of Bosnian Army soldiers, will be built in the Kazani …

A Bosnian court sentenced Bozidar Kuvelja to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed during the massacres in 1995.Kuvelja was found guilty of expelling the Bosniak population and participating in the murder of men who were being held in agricultural warehouses in Kravica after being brought from Srebrenica. …

Training centres where Serbs were taught to fight during the 1990s conflict in Croatia had links to officials in Belgrade, a Hague Tribunal trial is told.The paramilitary centres were under the effective control of the Belgrade authorities, said historian Christian Nielsen, an expert witness at the trial of former Croatian …

Serbian and ethnic Albanian representatives have failed to cut a deal to remove a memorial to ethnic Albanian fighters in south Serbia.Internationally-mediated talks on Thursday ended without a deal on the future of the monument in the town of Presevo which Belgrade wants to be demolished, seeing it as a …

Leaders of Serb-run northern Kosovo have sent a protest letter to Belgrade, complaining that Serbia is inching towards indirect recognition of Kosovo’s independence.Local leaders in Serb-run northern Kosovo sent an open letter to Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic on Thursday, expressing dissatisfaction with the government’s recently adopted resolution on Kosovo and …

On a visit to Belgrade, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi announced major investments in Serbia, ranging from the defence industry and agriculture to banking sector and aviation.Representatives of the United Arab Emirates and Serbia agreed in Belgrade on Wednesday to put into action business deals made last October, when …

An expert witness told the Hague Tribunal trial of Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic that Sarajevo residents could have been shot from his troops’ positions.The prosecution’s expert witness on snipers, Patrick van der Weijden, concluded that in 17 incidents in which residents of the Bosnian capital were targeted during the …

A watchdog group of NGOs on Wednesday warned that Albania’s institution have already missed the legal deadline to publish voting lists ahead of the June parliamentary elections.“The process of preparing and announcing preliminary electoral rolls, based residence and voting centres, has not respected the legal deadline,” the Coalition of Local …