Eurasia News

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has likened the recently leaked Council of Europe report – which accuses Thaci of leading an organized crime network smuggling everything from weapons and drugs to human organs harvested from kidnapped Serbs – to Nazi-style propaganda, and its author, Swiss Senator Dick Marty to Joseph …

Moldova’s acting president Marian Lupu appointed the leader of a pro-European party, Vladimir Filat, as the country’s PM on 31 December. Marian Lupu signed a decree the next day instructing former Prime Minister Vlad Filat to form a government. Lupu is now expected to hold the posts of Parliament speaker …

Outgoing Kosovo Albanian Interior Minister Bajram Redzepi says that northern Kosovo will not be on the agenda of the Belgrade-Priština talks. He told local newspapers that “the problem of the north cannot be solved in one year and that it requires a long-term approach”. “I will insist that the north …

Serbia expects to receive EU candidate status by the end of 2011, according to the country’s Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic. Serbian PM is also positive that his country will obtain a date for starting accession negotiations by the end of this year. “If we use this year in the properly …

Greece and Macedonia’s representatives, with the mediation of UN envoy Matthew Nimetz, are to meet on January 27 in New York to negotiate over the name of the Former Yugoslavian republic, Macedonian media and the foreign ministry informed.The talks will be renewed after a seven-week break.

Romania officially took over the six-month presidency of the Black Sea Economic Co-operation (BSEC) organisation from Greece on Saturday (January 1st). Romania said it will work to

Right before the New Year, Turkey and Japan signed a cooperation memorandum that the two sides hope will lead to the construction of a nuclear power plant in Turkey’s Black Sea province of Sinop. If realized, the Japanese-built nuclear power plant would be the second in Turkey, which is seeking …

What is the condition of al-Qaida, and what are its prospects in 2011 and beyond? The movement commissions the well-regarded SWISH management agency to deliver a further independent evaluation, to which openDemocracy has exclusive access. By Paul Rogers A report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the …

Bosnia-Herzegovina has taken over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), sparking concerns that the country’s complicated and indeed paralyzed political situation will have negative consequences on the world body, and at home. Expectedly, Bosnia’s politicians have provided assurances that their own ethno-political conflicts will not keep them …

Bosnia and Herzegovina on Saturday assumed the rotating UN Security Council presidency for the month of January. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ivan Barbalic, took over the rotating Council presidency from his American counterpart, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, who held the presidency for December 2010.