Balkans

As the summer season starts, Bulgaria hopes to lure more foreigners to spend their vacation on the Black Sea.Delyan Dobrev, Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism, said the country expects 10 per cent growth in the number of tourists visiting the Balkan country this summer. Dobrev is convinced that growth …

As Montenegro waits to find out whether the European Council will approve a start to negotiations with the EU, its officials are intensifying their meetings with representatives of the EU and the member states.One week before the European Council meeting that is expected to decide the fate of Montenegro’s talks, …

Adrian Nastase is in a stable situation after trying to shoot himself in the neck, but he will have to stay some weeks in hospital, doctors have said.Former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, who shot himself on June 20 evening in an attempt to avoid being arrested, underwent surgery on Thursday …

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 …