Eurasia

The Coalition of Local Observers, a Tirana-based watchdog group, on Tuesday urged President Bujar Nishani to declare the date of the 2013 elections as soon as possible.According to the NGOs, “the declaration of an election date would give public institutions the time they need to start a series of important …

The evidence trail concerning the murder of the Mihajlo Zec family, Croatian Serbs from Zagreb who were killed in December 1991, led directly Tomislav Mercep’s police unit, Antun Gugic testified on Tuesday.At the war crimes trial of Tomislav Mercep, a top advisor in the Croatian wartime Interior ministry, Gugic, who …

Romania’s not-so-friendly relations with Russia are under further strain following a car accident involving a Russian diplomat.Romania on Wednesday asked Russia to lift the diplomatic immunity of a Russian official whose vehicle hit and injured a young woman on a pedestrian crossing in Bucharest. A day earlier, Foreign Minister Titus …

Romanian police say a woman is in a coma after she was hit on a pedestrian crossing by a Russian diplomat driving an embassy car. The diplomat refused to take a breath test, citing diplomatic immunity.

Bosnian Muslims have voted down a bid to put a Serb mayor in control of Srebrenica for the first time since the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the town by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. Once predominantly Muslim, Srebrenica was the site of the worst mass killing on European soil …

Social Democrats finally get their way and expel ministers from the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, from the state government.Two SDA ministers and a deputy minister were removed from Bosnia’s Council of Ministers on October 22 after the largest Croatian party declined to vote against the proposal. Sulejman Tihic, …

The Bosniak member of the Bosnian Presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, has written a letter to Serbia’s President Tomislav Nikolic accusing him of irrevocably harming the relations between Bosnia and Serbia.

The ICTY defendant, Goran Hadzic, acted with other Serbian leaders to prevent the return of Croats to the Serb-run parts of Croatia during the 1990s, says one of the leaders of the Croatian Serbs, Veljko Dzakula.The trial of the former leader of the Croatian Serbs, Goran Hadzic, continued at the …

Poor infrastructure and lack of space are some of the biggest problems in the country’s judicial system, an NGO report says.A report on trial monitoring by a Montenegrin NGO, the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, CEDEM, says the principles of publicity, presumption of innocence and right to efficient defence …

Bulgaria believes that all Balkan countries must join NATO and the EU, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said on a state visit to Tirana on Monday.Borisov spoke during a joint press conference with his Albanian counterpart, Sali Berisha. He stressed that his cabinet and country adhere consistently to a balanced …