Balkans

BRUSSELS: Romania has taken some “backward steps” in fighting corruption despite European Union criticism, while fellow EU newcomer Bulgaria has made a number of positive moves, the bloc’s executive arm said yesterday. In interim reports on each, the European Commission told both countries, the poorest members of the bloc, that …

Skopje, February 12 (MIA) – Chairman of the State Election Commission (SEC) Aleksandar Novakoski had separate meetings Thursday with the Head of OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission, Peter Eicher, and Swedish Ambassador to Macedonia Lars Peter Freden. The meetings focused on SEC’s preparations for the forthcoming presidential, local elections in the …

Brussels, February 12  – Macedonia’s commitment and determination to remain loyal to its objective and pledge for full-fledged integration to NATO is the main message that was conveyed by country’s Foreign and Defense Ministers – Antonio Milososki and Zoran Konjanovski – to Alliance’s Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at …

Berlin, February 12  – Macedonia has great opportunity to join NATO, the European Union and get free visa regime by yearend, but the realization of these objectives depend substantially on the organization of forthcoming elections, German Foreign Office Minister of State Guenther Gloser said Thursday in Berlin after meeting Vice-Premier …

12 February 2009 – A senior United Nations official will meet with Serbian ministers later this month for wide-ranging discussions on Kosovo, which proclaimed its independence a year ago in a move that Serbia rejects. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Kosovo Lamberto Zannier received an invitation to meet with …

Belgrade, 12 Feb.  – European Union enlargement commissioner Ollie Rehn on Thursday urged Belgrade to arrest and hand over the two remaining fugitive suspects charged by the United Nations’ Hague-based war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The arrest and handover for trial at the Hague of former Bosnian Serb …

Germany’s mobile operator T-Mobile and its landline operator T-Home planned on Thursday to invest 180million euros (about 231 million U.S. dollars) in Macedonia in the next three years. Macedonia Telecom’s CEO Nikolai Beckers said T-Home’s investment plan has already been drawn up, while T-Mobile’s plan has entered the final stage …

WASHINGTON -The Balkans pose the greatest threat of instability in Europe in 2009, according to an annual threat assessment presented Thursday by U.S. intelligence director Dennis Blair. The report said the principal challenge will come from the unresolved political status of the Serb minority in Kosovo, and the uneasy interethnic …

BELGRADE  – When Nina Ivancev, 38, left Serbia for Australia in 1993, she was convinced she would never return to what was then a pariah state embroiled in Balkan wars. Now she is back, and finds it more stable than richer places. Ivancev was one of millions who left Yugoslavia …

Matthew Nimetz, the United Nations mediator in the Athens- Skopje “name” talks, did not table a new proposal at a Wednesday meeting with negotiators from the two countries, but asked both sides to strive for a positive atmosphere. Nimetz agreed with Macedonian and Greek representatives, Zoran Jolevski and Ademantios Vassilakis, …