Balkans

Russians aged under 18 will get free tourist visas to Bulgaria when making group visits, Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Milen Keremedchiev was quoted as saying by Focus news agency on March 12 2009. Teachers accompanying the groups will also get a free visa provided there is one teacher for every …

Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov is departing on March 12 for a two-day visit to Moldova, in accord with an official invitation from his Moldavian counterpart Vladimir Voronin, the press centre of the Presidency said on March 11 2009. Scheduled for the visit are discussions between the two leaders. Purvanov is …

Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko has been approved by all EU member countries to be the new EU Special Representative, EUSR, for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Inzko now faces Russian scrutiny before he can also be appointed the new High Representative to the country. “The process is still ongoing,” Inzko told Balkan …

Soldiers of the EU’s peacekeeping mission, EUFOR, supported by NATO and local police, began to search a house of a close associate of the war-time Bosnian Serb commander and war-crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, for material that would help reveal his whereabouts. Around 4:00 am on Thursday, some 60 EUFOR soldiers …

Serbia should start being truthful about its role in the Balkan wars of 1990s and adopt a formal strategy for dealing with victims and perpetrators, says a Council of Europe human rights report. The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg said on Wednesday during a visit to …

The Serbian minister of economy Mladjan Dinkic told a the press conference Wednesday that the export of arms from Serbia to Libya was halted by the Security Information Agency because of suspicions that the owner of the company that mediated the deal is on the UN’s black list. Dinkic said …

The University of Pristina has gotten back thousands of documents that were removed by the Serbs during the conflict in the late 1990s, with the help an NGO. SPARK NGO, a non-profit organisation that supports people in post-conflict regions by building the capacity of local economic and educational institutions, helped …

Bulgaria’s economy grew by an annual rate of six per cent in 2008, making the country the fastest growing economy in the European Union. The annual growth figure was dragged lower by slower growth of 3.5 per cent in the forth quarter, half the rate of growth that was recorded …

Romania’s annual inflation rate rose slightly to 6.9 per cent in February from 6.7 per cent in January, primarily due to the weakening of the national currency, the leu. The National Statistics Institute, INS, also said on Wednesday that the rise in inflation in February was due to an increase …

The report said Serbia needed about 30 million euros ($38 million) to unearth and defuse unexploded cluster ordnance. About 160,000 people in Serbia are still in danger from thousands of unexploded cluster bombs a decade after NATO’s bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, a Norway-based aid organisation said on Tuesday. The study …