January, 2013

• 28 January

  Macedonia, Serbia to Hold Joint Government Session

  The two governments will hold their first-ever joint meeting in Belgrade in May in an attempt to boost cooperation and economic ties.Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic told a press conference in Skopje on Monday that the planned joint government session would help push forward …

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• 28 January

  Albanian Parties Trade Jibes Ahead of Elections

  Albania’s Socialists accused the ruling Democrats of planning to rig the June 23 polls while the governing party claimed the opposition was trying to spark another crisis.As the political environment heated up ahead of the parliamentary elections, Socialist Party leader Edi Rama said the government was planning to rig the …

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• 28 January

  Bosniaks Call for Global Srebrenica Genocide Day

  The World Bosniak Forum has asked the UN secretary general to commemorate the wartime massacres by declaring July 11 International Srebrenica Genocide Remembrance Day.The United Nations should officially mark the worst killings of the Bosnian conflict, said Mustafa Ceric, president of the World Bosniak Forum, in a letter sent to …

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• 28 January

  Bulgarian Nuclear Power Plant Referendum Flops

  Bulgarians voted in favour of building a new nuclear power station but the referendum failed to achieve a high enough turnout to make it valid.The country’s first referendum of the post-communist era is expected to be declared invalid after a mere 21 per cent of eligible voters turned out on …

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• 28 January

  Montenegro Trade Unions Protest Over Crisis Tax

  Union members rallied in front of the Montenegrin parliament on Monday against government plans to raise income tax to tackle a growing budget deficit.The unions said the plan to bring in higher taxes in order to help plug the hole in Montenegro’s budget was unfair to the poor and called …

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• 28 January

  Croatia Arrests Six Over Zagreb Explosion

  Police have detained six men for causing a minor explosion in the main square of the Croatian capital, but said their motive was not political.The capital’s police commander Goran Burusic told a press conference on Sunday that the accused “agreed in December last year that they would detonate an explosive …

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• 28 January

  Bosnian Town Scraps ‘Tax on Sunshine’

  Local authorities in Tuzla in north-east Bosnia are to cancel a law which forces solar energy generators to pay them to use the sun as a power source.Tuzla’s cantonal government said this week that it would scrap the legislation, which decreed that people using solar panels to generate electricity for …

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• 26 January

  Pakistan’s attorney general says 700 people are held without trial

  Irfan Qadir, Pakistan’s attorney general, said that the country is holding around 700 possible militants without trial in camps along the border with Afghanistan. The attorney made this statement during a hearing in front of the Supreme Court

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• 25 January

  Giant Mother Teresa to Adorn Macedonian Capital

  The spree in erecting giant monuments in Skopje continues as Macedonian authorities lay grounds for a new 30-metre-high statue dedicated to the Nobel Prize-winning nun.The statue of the late nun, who was born in Skopje to an ethnic Albanian family but spent most of her life in India, is to …

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• 25 January

  Serb War Victims Address Hague Over ‘Unjust’ Acquittals

  Serbs who suffered in the 1990s conflicts sent a letter to the Hague Tribunal saying recent verdicts acquitting Croatian and Kosovo officials of war crimes were politically biased.“The verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] in the cases against Gotovina, Markac and Haradinaj made the idea …

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