Eurasia

Lucas Papademos, the Greek PM, is expected to announce on Wednesday the snap election date for May 6. Papademos will meet later today with the country’s president, Karolos Papoulias, and ask for elections to take place 18 months ahead of regularly scheduled elections.

The US Embassy in Sofia (Bulgaria) will adopt a new program with the objective to ease the visa renewal process. According to the new program, all bulgarian citiziens

Dimitar Arnaudov has handed over his letters of credence as an ambassador of Bulgaria to Albania to President Bamir Topi. Arnaudov discussed with the Albanian President about bilateral relations and the European prospects of the Western Balkan countries, including Albania. The two underlined that bilateral cooperation should enhance in fields …

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will meet with President Karolos Papoulias on Wednesday afternoon. Papademos is leading the Greek interim government since November 2011. 

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic and National Council of Switzerland President Hansjorg Walter met on Tuesday. The two expressed the willing of the two sides to continue

International envoy Kofi Annan arrived in Turkey on Tuesday to visit refugees along Turkey’s border with Syria. He is expected to visit camps along the border where shootings from the Syrian side wounded six on Turkish soil Monday.

Milorad Dodik, the president of the Serb Republic (RS), said on Monday that the recent commemoration of the war in Sarajevo was another attempt to assign guilt only to Serbs. He said he does not oppose the remembrance of victims of the war, Muslim and Serb, but he thinks that …

Moldova has decided to withdraw the licence of a pro-communist TV station for biased reporting, it was announced on Friday. The station has often criticised the ruling coalition, which is pro-Western and came to power in 2009 after winning the elections against the Communists. NIT said it wants to appeal …

Japan’s PM Yoshikiko Noda told Bulgarian Parliamentary Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva that his country wishes to improve business activity in Bulgaria if the business climate gets better. Tsetska Tsacheva stressed that Bulgaria will make efforts to improve bilateral relations in fields such as business and tourism. Noda said further that a …

Macedonia’s ruling coalition submitted a draft of the new Lustration law on Tuesday to the parliament which aims to dismiss ex-police informants from public offices. This comes after the Constitutional Court scrapped in late March the twelve controversial provisions of the existing law, which narrowed its scope.