Balkans

GREECE NATO Secretary General Andres Fogh Rasmussen will visit Athens for talks with Greek officials. NATO chief will meet Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and Defense Minister Evangalos Meimarakis. Details will be announced at the press conference, which will be hold by Karamanlis and Rasmunssen. …

ALBANIA Albania is the only country that didn’t feel the impact of global economic crisis, the country’s Prime Minister Sali Berisha said. In his address to the Committee on National Strategy Planning, Berisha stressed that there have been pay cuts in all countries except for Albania, where salaries surged significantly, …

BULGARIA Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov, whose Cabinet took office on July 27 2009, finds himself a month later with a 64 per cent approval rating and his party GERB with an even stronger lead over the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) than at the July national parliamentary elections. This emerges …

BULGARIA Bulgarian Minister without portfolio Bozhidar Dimitrov will not visit Macedonia today, Macedonian Dnevnik newspaper writes. Instead of coming to the town of Prilep, where he was supposed to attend the inauguration of the restored Bulgarian-German cemetery, Dimitrov will go to a festival of arts in Bulgarian coastal town of …

BULGARIA Bulgaria is ready to buy 2.5 m2 of natural gas from Turkmenistan, said Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov after official ceremony on signing three documents between Bulgaria and Turkmenistan. Bulgarian head of state said this is an expression of gratitude towards Turkmenistan over the assessment Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow gave …

BiH Bosnian police arrested two Bosnian Serbs on Thursday, including a police officer, suspected of taking part in the massacre of about 200 Muslims and Croats in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, the state prosecutor’s office said. Branko Topola, 41, was arrested in a police station in the northwestern town of …

SERBIA The Serbian government has proposed a 10 per cent cut in the number of public sector employees in talks with an IMF delegation, daily Blic reports. The measure is intended to cover the budget deficit, which is now equivalent to 4.5 per cent of GDP Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic …

MACEDONIA Macedonia’s ongoing industrial output contraction plumbed new depths in July, the State Statistical Office revealed. A record near 20 per cent output plunge was registered, when compared to July 2008. This is the tenth month in a row that industrial output has shrunk. Macedonia’s flagship metal industry was the …

BiH Bosnia’s Federation entity is preparing to privatise around 30 public companies over the next year, local media reported on Thursday. “Privatisation fever shakes the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” columnist Faruk Vele wrote in a piece published in influential Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz on Thursday. Authorities in the Croat-Bosniak …

KOSOVO The rebuilding of Kosovo Albanian homes in north Mitrovica was again delayed on Wednesday, when Serb members of Kosovo’s Police and EU rule of law mission, EULEX, officials prevented workers from entering the construction site. The Krou I Vitakut/Brdjani neighbourhood of Mitrovica has seen repeated violence since Kosovo Albanians …