Eurasia

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has stated that NATO will not allow recent tensions in Kosovo to turn back time. He added that in the past 12 years KFOR had helped turn one of Europe’s hotbeds into a largely peaceful place. Rasmussen conferred with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in …

A majority of members of the Kosovo assembly in Priština rejected on Thursday demands of the opposition Self-Determination Movement. The Self-Determination Movement requested the Kosovo police to unilaterally remove the roadblocks in northern Kosovo and called on the Kosovo Albanian government to cancel the dialogue with Belgrade. With 54 votes …

Swiss or EU observers will be placed on Georgia’s internationally recognized border, Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Tornike Gordadze said on Friday while commenting on Georgia’s consent to a Swiss proposal on the Georgian-Russian negotiations on Russia’s accession to the WTO.

A member of the Kosovo dialogue team says the EU envoy has called for a new round of talks between Pristina and Belgrade in November, and Kosovo is willing to attend. The next round of Kosovo-Serbia talks, on technical issues, may be held in mid-November, if the two sides accept …

Macedonia’s Parliament has made public its conclusions on the proposals outlined in the latest European Commission progress report. Late last night, the parliament acknowledged that the report reflected the real situation with regard to Macedonia’s achieved reforms, and obliged competent bodies to analyze recommendations made in the report to enable …

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Thursday hailed “a new era, a new chapter” for the debt-strapped nation after Europe’s leaders sealed a major deal to contain the eurozone debt crisis. The deal notably will cut 100 billion euros off Greece’s 350-billion-euro debt mountain thanks to an agreement between the …

Northern Kosovo Serbs removed a part of the barricade on the Kosovska Mitrovica-Ribariće road in the village of Zupče on Thursday morning. The barricade is located on the road leading to the Brnjak administrative crossing.

KFOR’s Czech soldiers will complete their 12 year-long engagement in Kosovo early in November, the Czech Defense Ministry released on Thursday. Ministry’s spokeswoman Jana Ruzickova said that 90 Czech soldiers who are currently part of KFOR contingent

Georgia said Thursday it has accepted a Swiss proposal that could open the way for Russia to join the World Trade Organization. Russia needs to reach individual agreements with all 153 members of the WTO, and the lack of progress in negotiations with Georgia has been the last significant stumbling …

The speaker of parliament, Jakup Krasniqi, says it’s not up to the Kosovo government to remove Serb barricades in the north as that is the responsibility of international peacekeepers. A senior official in Kosovo says the government in Pristina expects NATO peacekeepers in KFOR to remove Serb roadblocks erected in …