Balkans

Ethnic minorities, Roma especially, are failing to benefit much from Bosnia’s EU integration process, a conference in Sarajevo heard.Minorities are failing to benefit from the country’s EU integration process, Bosnia’s Council of National Minorities, CNM, and the Roma Information Center, Kali Sara, RIC, have said.

Activists from the Vetevendosje [Self-determination] movement threw tomatoes at an EU delegation, which came to discuss the continuation of Kosovo’s dialogue with Serbia.Hundreds of activists from the opposition Vetevendosja Movement protested and threw rotten tomatoes at the delegation led by the European Union envoy for the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue, Robert Cooper.

The Bosnian State police have arrested Bosnian Serbs Ostoja Stanisic and Marko Milosevic, under suspicion that they took part in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995.Stanisic and Milosevic were arrested by the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, in the territory of Zvornik.

Macedonia’s parliament passed a new Lustration law on Wednesday evening which aims to purge former police informants from public offices.The law submitted by the main ruling centre-right VMRO DPMNE party was also endorsed by their junior partners, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI. The opposition Social Democrats voted against it.

Testifying at the trial of Nazim Bllaca, a self-proclaimed former SHIK assassin, Kadri Veseli said Bllaca never worked for the agency, which didn’t carry out assassinations in any case.The former director of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, SHIK, Kadri Veseli, told the court that Nazim Bllaca a self-confessed former SHIK assassin, …

Adrian Nastase is now in hospital, after a two-year jail sentence for siphoning off state funds apparently drove him to try to take his own life.Adrian Nastase is now in hospital, after a two-year jail sentence for siphoning off state funds apparently drove him to try to take his own …

Delyan Dobrev, Bulgaria’s Energy Minister, has announced that Bulgaria will start the construction of a cross-border gas link with Romania in August.The gas interconnector, which will cross the river Danube at Ruse/Giurgiu, is being developed jointly by Bulgartransgaz and its Romanian counterpart Transgaz. Some experts have described the 25-km gas …

Bulgaria has not done as much as it should to eliminate human trafficking, but is heading in the right direction, a US State Department report says.Bulgaria is a source and, to a lesser extent, a transit and destination country for women and children who are subjected to sex trafficking, as …

The last head of the disbanded Kosovo Secret Services Agency, Kadri Veseli, is to testify on Wednesday in the trial of Nazim Bllaca on SHIK’s role.The former director of Kosovo’s Secret Agency, SHIK, Kadri Veseli, is due to appear on Wednesday at a trial to testify about the workings of …

Tarrif disputes between the two Albanian countries are hampering the goal of creating a single market – with a row over cement being the latest example.Ever since NATO helped mainly Albanian Kosovo break away from Serbia more than a decade ago, talk of creating a single market with neighbouring Albania …