Eurasia

NICOSIA, Cyprus Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat said on Saturday (May 9th) his side plans to call a referendum on a reunification proposal by the end of this year or early in 2010. He said his aim is to complete the first phase of reunification talks with Cypriot President …

ANKARA, Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu rejected on Friday (May 8th) any alternative to full EU membership for Turkey. “All we ask of the EU is to keep its promises. Proposing alternative memberships is disrespectful not to us, but to the European culture itself,” Davutoglu told a meeting with EU …

WASHINGTON, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and visiting Romanian Foreign Minister Cristian Diaconescu signed a bilateral agreement on legal assistance and a new extradition treaty Friday (May 8th).

ATHENS, Greece At least 14 people were injured Saturday (May 9th) in clashes between police, neo-Nazi protesters and immigrants in Athens, media reported. Violence erupted after a group of about 300 members of the neo-Nazi group Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) gathered in central Athens for an anti-immigrant protest.

PRISTINA, Kosovo Interior Minister Zenun Pajaziti urged Interpol Friday (May 8th) not to implement Serbia’s arrest warrants for Kosovo’s citizens. He was referring to Colombia’s move Wednesday to expel former Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku, who is wanted by Serbia for alleged war crimes.

MOSCOW Georgian troops did not attack Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia during Tbilisi’s assault on the separatist republic in August 2008, Georgia’s president said Monday on Ekho Moskvy radio. “With full responsibility I can say there were never any and there could not have been any attacks on Russian peacekeepers,” …

BUCHAREST The preservation of military monuments and cemeteries in Bulgaria and Romania will be subject to a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Currently, the departments in charge harmonize the document, Bulgarian ambassador to Romania Valentin Radomirski said.

The European Union will unblock part of the frozen funds for Bulgaria at the beginning of next week, the German newspaper Die Welt reported on Sunday. The European Commission is expected to unfreeze the first tranche of EUR 115 M under ISPA programs for infrastructure projects, which aim to improve …

Kosovo Police said that ten policemen were injured on Sunday as around 300 Serbs threw stones at them in protest to electricity cuts. The protests began at the eastern village of Gjilane/Gnjilane, when police say protesters gathered and blocked the Gjilane/Gnjilane-Bujanovac road. For the past three days several Serb inhabited …

Maritime law experts contacted by Balkan Insight have questioned the accuracy of local media reports of a land grab by Greece of Albanian territory, after the two neighbours signed an agreement to delineate the continental shelf in the Ionian Sea. The agreement signed by Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and …