Eurasia Press & News
BISHKEK – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament will vote next week on whether to shut a U.S. air base, an important staging post for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, Kyrgyz officials said on Thursday. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced closure of the Manas base in Moscow on Tuesday after securing financial aid from …
Read More »Kosovo Appoints First Intelligence Agency Chief
Kosovo named a former senior police officer as the chief of its new Intelligence Service on Wednesday, after months of delays blamed on clientelism and political horse-trading with foreign intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Agency is one of the central security institutions of the new country, that declared independence from Serbia …
Read More »FT: Croatia, Iceland In EU By ’11, Other Balkans Lag
Croatia and Iceland have a chance of joining the European Union in 2011, while Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia may enter all together as a bloc sometime between 2015 and 2020, the Financial Times says in an editorial this week. With the global economy in crisis, the bloc’s leaders …
Read More »Barroso: Slovenia-Croatia dispute is bilateral issue
The European Commission wants Croatia and Slovenia to find a negotiated solution to their border dispute so that Croatia could join the European Union, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in Brussels on Tuesday evening. “There is a Croatian-Slovene bilateral issue and we would like the two countries to …
Read More »Iran Summons EU Ambassadors
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian foreign ministry summoned EU countries’ ambassadors to Tehran on Wednesday to condemn the block’s double-standards and political approach towards terrorism. At the meeting, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Mehdi Safari, expressed Iran’s deep concern regarding EU action on delisting the anti-Iran terrorist group, the …
Read More »Iran Not to Hold Talks with US in Munich
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran and the US are not scheduled to attend bilateral talks on the sidelines of a security conference due to be held in Munich, Germany on Feb. 6-8, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday. “As some sources in the Iranian parliament have noted, no Iran-US negotiations have …
Read More »Kosovo MP Team Backs Serbia, Bosnia Embargo
A Kosovo parliamentary commission has recommended that the government implements an embargo on Serbian and Bosnian goods as a tit-for-tat response to Serbia and Bosnia blocking and taxing Kosovo’s exports. Serbia rejects the secession by Kosovo’s Albanian majority last February and has vowed never to accept it as an independent …
Read More »Headscarved Pupil Pushes Limits In Macedonia
The case of a teenage girl who wants to wear her headscarf to school is creating waves in Macedonia, with educational authorities, local officials and teachers locked in a tug-of-war over religous freedom and the right to education. The girl, who attends a high school in the western Macedonian town …
Read More »UNMIK To Broker Kosovo – Serbia ‘Talks’
The head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, Lamberto Zannier, is negotiating with both Belgrade and Pristina to start talks on ‘technical issues’, but it is still unclear whether top state officials or experts will take part, UNMIK spokesman Alexander Ivanko told Serbia’s B92 radio. “Ambassador Zannier met Serbian …
Read More »Serbia To Talk About Kosovo, Not With Kosovo
Serbia is ready to talk about practical issues regarding life in Kosovo as long as discussions do not touch on Kosovo’s declaration of independence, Serbian President Boris Tadic said on Tuesday, indicating Belgrade would only accept the United Nations mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, not the ethnic Albanian government in Pristina, …
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