Albanian PM Sali Berisha has announced the local elections will be held on February 18th, instead on January 20th – the date set by the Albanian President Alfred Moisiu, Balkanweb informs.
Montenegro's authorities are set to introduce changes to the Constitution, including official use of both Montenegrin and Serbian languages and refraining from treating the Church in the supreme state law.
Serbia plans a media campaign to increase awareness of the trafficking of some 120,000 women and children each year through the Balkans and into Western Europe.
A Kosovo government official and a party colleague have been arrested after a joint raid by police and NATO peacekeepers on a house packed with heavy weapons and ammunition.
EU procrastination and internal division on the future status of Kosovo could see the region relapse into instability, NGO International Crisis Group (ICG) has warned ahead of a January or February recommendation on status by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
European Union officials will remain in Kosovo after the issue over the Serbian province's future status is resolved, in order to oversee the police and judiciary, EU officials said Wednesday.
Kosovo has Southeast Europe's lowest GDP, pervasive unemployment, and a lopsided balance of trade. Its leaders will soon need to shift their focus away from the status issue towards wealth creation, writes the University of Toronto's Robert C. Austin.
Representatives from Macedonia, Croatia, BiH, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and UNMIK adopted Tuesday the joint Declaration on CEFTA enlargement, MIA correspondent reports.
Slobodan Milosevic's trial in The Hague provided important evidence about Belgrade's role in the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s, as well as lessons for future war crimes trials, the group Human Rights Watch said in a report, released on Thursday.
The U.N. administrator in Kosovo urged the Security Council to make a speedy decision on the province's future status, warning that any delay beyond January will raise tension and play into the hands of extremists.
The western part of the Balkan Peninsula stands at an important crossroads between the past and the future. The one remaining statehood issue between Kosovo and Serbia is rapidly approaching resolution by international actors.
The Riga summit is great encouragement, especially for our ministries of defence and armies in order to meet our strategic objective-NATO membership, reads the final Declaration, which was adopted at the meeting held among Macedonian, Albanian and Croatian defence ministers
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic made a televised address to the nation on Sunday evening following strong reactions to 30-second video footage of his speech in early 1990s which the Index.hr portal posted on Saturday in which he reportedly glorified the Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945.
The latest rotation of U.S. troops to Kosovo will take charge of keeping the peace in the province just before it could become independent from Serbia, which is loath to let it go.
Bulgaria's parliament approved a law on Wednesday to open up its Cold War files and unmask agents in the Balkan state's communist-era secret services just weeks before it joins the European Union on January 1.
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said in Brussels that the U.S. wishes to see the U.N. Security Council adopt a resolution on Kosovo in February or early March next year. Burns added that he is surprised by the statement of the Russian ambassador to Belgrade that Russia may possibly veto the solution for Kosovo's status.
"We think that after seven years of UN administration, the people of Kosovo have a right to clarify their future," US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rosemary DiCarlo said in Pristina Monday. However, she and EU envoy Stefan Lehne also warned that any outbreaks of violence would only serve to derail the process.
U.S. assistant secretary of state Daniel Fried says Boris Tadic’s letter significantly influenced the decision to invite Serbia to Partnership for Peace.
The tribunal’s appeals chamber sentenced Stanislav Galic, a former Bosnian Serb army commander in charge of Serb troops deployed around Sarajevo, to life imprisonment for his role in the campaign of sniping and shelling against the city’s civilians from 09. 1992 to 08. 1994.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian Government and Serbia remain “diametrically opposed” in their views of the future status of the Serbian province, which that the United Nations has run ever since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid ethnic fighting, according to Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s latest report on the issue released today.
Russian officials said Thursday that Moscow would recognize Kosovo independence only after Serbia did, adding that Kosovo should negotiate one-on-one with Belgrade.
