Eurasia

Ukraine has promised to raise household gas prices and enforce payment of bills to strengthen its national gas company and help it secure loans to avert a new gas crisis with Russia, an EU official said today. Kiev hoped the pledge would boost the chances of progress at talks today …

TBILISI Georgian opposition leader and former U.N. ambassador Irakly Alasania launched his own political party on Thursday, saying long-standing protests demanding the Georgian president’s resignation were not in vain.

SUKHUMI Nearly a year after Georgia’s war with Russia, the leader of Georgia’s biggest rebel region is determined Tbilisi will never rule his land again.Shrugging off international calls for Georgia’s territorial integrity to be respected, de facto Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh told Reuters in an interview that the West needed …

A working meeting on motor traffic from Europe to Afghanistan via the Caucasus took place in Tbilisi on Friday in the attendance of Georgian Economic Development Minister Lasha Zhvania, European experts, representatives of international organizations and the U.S. Department of Commerce. 

BUCHAREST Foreign ministers of Romania, Serbia and Hungary will gather on Saturday for the fourth ministerial meeting in Timisoara in western Romania. The meeting will be attended by Romanian Foreign Minister Cristian Diaconescu, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic and Hungarian Foreign Minister Balazs Peter.

Romania, which received a 20 billion-euro ($28 billion) bailout led by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, got a further $423 million loan from the World Bank to weather the financial crisis. 

Moldova asked the European Union on Thursday to take action to stop what it said was Romanian interference in its affairs.Romanian President Traian Basescu has angered Moldova’s leaders by backing the country’s liberal opposition in a parliamentary election set for July 29.

SOFIA Bulgaria’s outgoing Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev announced on Friday that Iraq pledged to pump 15 billion cubic meters of gas through Nabucco pipeline starting from 2014-2015.

Bulgaria’s new Parliament is only at the stage of laying down the rules that will govern the legislature’s work for the rest of its term, but the major parties have already had their first major clash. The issue that irked the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the predominantly ethnic Turk …

TIRANA, Albania The opposition Socialist Party (SP) blamed the government Thursday (July 16th) for failing to meet EU standards for achieving visa-free travel to member countries. Three other Balkan countries did make it onto the so-called White Schengen List.