Serbs from north Kosovo blocked the roads at the border with Serbia on Thursday morning in protest at the European Union reopening two customs points that were burnt down just after Kosovo’s declaration of independence last February. The two border points, known as 1 and 31, were set on fire …
Read More »Macedonia President Frontrunners ‘Near Broke’
The two presidential candidates viewed as favorites in Macedonia’s March 22 election, both employed as professors at the Skopje law faculty, have not received pay checks for two months, sharing the fate of thousands of Macedonians who are still awaiting late salary payments. According to a report in Macedonian daily …
Read More »Serbia PM Sees Stable Dinar, To Prop JAT
Serbia’s dinar currency, that has lost 25 percent of its value in the last three months, will soon become stable and the state will keep its floating rate to avoid big wage cuts, Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said. “We expect the dinar to become stable, ” he said in an …
Read More »Kosovo Prefers EULEX Judges To UNMIK
Two months into the mandate of the European Union police and justice mission, officials and legal professionals in Kosovo say they find the EULEX-operated courts stricter, more procedural, but also more professional and effective compared to the judicial authorities run by the United Nations mission . The United Nations mission …
Read More »Kyrgyz parliament to vote on U.S. base next week
BISHKEK – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament will vote next week on whether to shut a U.S. air base, an important staging post for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, Kyrgyz officials said on Thursday. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced closure of the Manas base in Moscow on Tuesday after securing financial aid from …
Read More »Kosovo Appoints First Intelligence Agency Chief
Kosovo named a former senior police officer as the chief of its new Intelligence Service on Wednesday, after months of delays blamed on clientelism and political horse-trading with foreign intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Agency is one of the central security institutions of the new country, that declared independence from Serbia …
Read More »FT: Croatia, Iceland In EU By ’11, Other Balkans Lag
Croatia and Iceland have a chance of joining the European Union in 2011, while Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia may enter all together as a bloc sometime between 2015 and 2020, the Financial Times says in an editorial this week. With the global economy in crisis, the bloc’s leaders …
Read More »Barroso: Slovenia-Croatia dispute is bilateral issue
The European Commission wants Croatia and Slovenia to find a negotiated solution to their border dispute so that Croatia could join the European Union, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in Brussels on Tuesday evening. “There is a Croatian-Slovene bilateral issue and we would like the two countries to …
Read More »Iran Summons EU Ambassadors
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian foreign ministry summoned EU countries’ ambassadors to Tehran on Wednesday to condemn the block’s double-standards and political approach towards terrorism. At the meeting, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Mehdi Safari, expressed Iran’s deep concern regarding EU action on delisting the anti-Iran terrorist group, the …
Read More »Iran Not to Hold Talks with US in Munich
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran and the US are not scheduled to attend bilateral talks on the sidelines of a security conference due to be held in Munich, Germany on Feb. 6-8, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday. “As some sources in the Iranian parliament have noted, no Iran-US negotiations have …
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