Eurasia

Bulgaria’s caretaker Prime Minister, Marin Raykov called for a new and more in-depth analysis of the Russian-sponsored South Stream gas pipeline project. Speaking Wednesday at the regularly-scheduled meeting of the caretaker government, Raykov asked his ministers to organize a round table on South Stream.

Kosovar Parliament Speaker Yakup Krasnici on Monday said that Serbia’s rejection of an European Union (EU) offer on Kosovo was “not tragic”. In a statement made on Monday, Krasnici underlined that Kosovo and

France has started to withdraw its troops from Mali, with the first group of 100 soldiers already leaving the West African country to Cyprus, local media reported Tuesday.

“Road infrastructure in North Bulgaria will be a total priority in the next programme period,” Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said at the opening of the 8th Annual National Conference ‘Strategic Infrastructure Bulgaria 2013’.

Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan met Romanian Economy Minister Varujan Vosganian to discuss improvement of bilateral ties.

Montenegro’s President Filip Vujanovic has won a third term in office, the electoral commission has said, despite opposition claims that their candidate was the winner. Vujanovic won 51.21 percent of the votes compared with Miodrag Lekic’s 48.79 percent, commission chairman Ivan Kalezic told reporters on Monday.

Holding elections in Mali in July “is going to be difficult but desirable”, given the large number of displaced people and the adverse climate conditions, UN special envoy for the Sahel Romano Prodi told the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

UN mediator in the Macedonia-Greece name row, Matthew Nimitz, will meet with the negotiators of the two countries – Zoran Jolevski and Adamandios Vasilakis.

China strongly supports Serbia in all state priorities including the preservation of the territorial integrity, Vuk Jeremic has said. Serbia’s former foreign minister, now UN General Assembly

A French force of 1,000 soldiers has begun a sweep of a valley thought to be a logistics base for Al Qaeda-linked Islamists near the Malian city of Gao. This operation is one of France’s largest actions since its intervention