Balkans

Romanian President Traian Basescu is on an official visit to Skopje today, where he is meeting with his Macedonian counterpart George Ivanov. Speaking at a joint press conference with Ivanov in the Macedonian capital, Basescu said that Bucharest would accept any solution on the name issue that is reached between …

Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, will join prosecutors from the region for a two-day conference in Brioni, Croatia on cooperation in war crimes prosecution.

The European Commission announced today its adoption of a proposal to lift the visa regime for Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the two countries must still fulfill remaining benchmarks before their citizens can travel without a visa in the Schengen zone.

The Prime Ministers of Serbia and Slovenia, Mirko Cvetkovic and Borut Pahor, on Wednesday expressed their desire to deal with unresolved issues from their shared past and to focus on the shared future of EU membership for the west Balkan region.

EU foreign ministers, as well as senior officials from the EU, U.S. and Russia will be attending the EU-Western Balkans conference on June 2 in Sarajevo. The information was confirmed by the Bosnia-Herzegovina Foreign Ministry.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Tuesday (May 25th) to discuss the situations in Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). “All … shared the view that BiH’s future lies in Euro-Atlantic structures,” Rasmussen told reporters after the meeting.

A day after the opposition Socialist Party (SP) returned to parliament, OSCE and EC ambassadors reiterated on Tuesday (May 25th) that lawmakers should take advantage of this development to hold debates, rather than “insult each other”, OSCE Ambassador Robert Bosch said.

Serbian and Slovenian Prime Ministers Mirko Cvetković and Borut Pahor said that relations between the two countries were good. “Relations are friendly, political cooperation has intensified, and the economic relations of the two countries are progressing despite the crisis,” Pahor said.

Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden yesterday during an official visit to Washington D.C. Kosor called her visit “the most important day of my political career”. She did not meet with

The leaders of Turkish and Greek communities in Cyprus on Wednesday resumed the talks on reunification of the island following a two-month pause. This is the first meeting of the newly elected Turkish Cypriot President Dervis Eroglu and the Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias.