April, 2009

• 21 April

  Topi urges Albanians to vote in June elections

  TIRANA, Albania President Bamir Topi on Sunday (April 19th) again urged all citizens to participate in the June 28th general elections, given the importance of these elections to potential EU membership.

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• 21 April

  Kazakhstan refuses to take part in NATO drills in Georgia

  ASTANA  – Kazakhstan will not take part in NATO-led military exercises in Georgia in May, the Kazakh defense minister said on Tuesday. Kazakhstan was earlier scheduled to take part in the Cooperative Longbow/Cooperative Lancer-2009 command-and-staff exercise, which Russia has criticized as unhelpful in the wake of last summer’s armed conflict …

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• 21 April

  South Ossetia detains European observers

  MOSCOW  – The pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia has detained several observers from the OSCE for illegally crossing the Georgian-South Ossetian border, a separatist official told Reuters on Tuesday. “OSCE representatives were detained on South Ossetian territory for illegal border crossing,” Irina Gagloyeva said, without giving further details. She …

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• 21 April

  Romania appoints ambassador to ASEAN

  JAKARTA, April 21 – Romania has appointed Gheorghe Vilcu as the country’s ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a statement from the ASEAN Secretariat said here Tuesday. The new ambassador becomes the ninth ambassador to ASEAN, who comes from the European Union (EU). Vilcu presented his letter …

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• 21 April

  Romania Voices Mass Citizenship Plan for Moldovans

  Romania has announced plans to give citizenship to up to 1 million Moldovans, a project that has left Brussels dismayed. Bucharest has put forward a bill to extend the right to naturalisation for Moldovans whose grandparent or great-grandparent was a Romanian. Previously, only Moldovans with Romanian grandparents could apply. The …

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• 21 April

  Bulgaria President: We Strive to Develop Ties with Russia

  Bulgaria’s President, Georgi Parvanov, stated that the country was striving to develop positive business and political relations with the Russian Federation. Parvanov made the statements in an interview for the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung published Monday and cited by the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS. “There are so many great traditions shared …

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• 21 April

  Italy: EU’s Attitude To Serbia ‘Not Good’

  Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says the attitude of the European Union towards Serbia “has not been good as of lately”. To the remark that he had recently presented an eight-point plan for a speedier EU integration of the Balkans, he underlined that many were wrong to believe that all …

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• 21 April

  Croatia Rejects EU Mediation in Slovenia Spat

  Croat President Stipe Mesic has insisted on an appeal to the International Court of Justice in order to settle its border dispute with Slovenia. His comments followed press reports of a European Union proposed arbitration plan. “A court must establish the facts and Croatia will accept any decision reached by …

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• 21 April

  Key Race for Bosnian Muslim Leader Heats Up

  The son of the uncontested Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) leader, the late Alija Izetbegovic, says he’ll pull out of politics if he fails to become the new president of the ruling Bosnian Party of Democratic Action, SDA. With this statement, the usually cautious Bakir Izetbegovic has apparently gone beyond the point …

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• 21 April

  Serb President’s Trip to Kosovo ‘Only Religious’

  Serbian President Boris Tadic’s visit to Kosovo over the weekend should be viewed as a private religious visit by a Serbian citizen, argues the speaker of Kosovo’s Assembly, Jakup Krasniqi. Tadic entered Kosovo on Friday after initially requesting a visit from the European Union office in Belgrade, in order to …

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