Eurasia

An African force currently in Mali should be converted into a UN peacekeeping operation and a separate combat force should be created to confront Islamist threats, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended to the Security Council on Tuesday, March 26.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Georgia on Wednesday, March 27. During the visit Davutoglu will meet with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Prime Minister and other officials. The Foreign Ministry stressed that the issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as Turkey’s assistance to Georgia on NATO integration will be …

Turkey expects the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to withdraw from Turkey before the end of summer, Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin announced on March 27. “We have projected the exit [of the PKK militants] before the end of summer,” Ergin said. 

The Hague Tribunal has rejected Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic’s request to allow Serbian citizens to serve their sentences in Serbia. According to the proposal, top Serbian officials would give up on the UN General Assembly debate on the Hague Tribunal in return.

Serbia’s Deputy PM Suzana Grubjesic has stated that a community of Serb municipalities in Kosovo needs to have “precise executive powers”. She said that Belgrade would be constructive in the dialogue as long as there was a chance to reach an agreement.

At Tuesday’s meeting of North Atlantic Council in Brussels, NATO welcomed Montenegro’s aspirations towards the membership and encouraged the country to continue reforms. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO, described the meeting with Milo Djukanovic, the Montenegrin Prime Minister, as “very good”.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will dispatch over 240 international observers in Bulgaria for the forthcoming parliamentary elections on May 12. A Needs Assessment Mission report of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights

The next trilateral meeting of Georgian, Azerbaijani and Turkish foreign ministers will be held in Batumi, March 28, Georgian

Bulgarian interim Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Marin Raykov will be on a two-day working visit to Brussels, Belgium, on March 26-27. The Bulgarian delegation headed by PM Marin Raykov is comprised of Deputy

Ahmet Davutoglu attended the Arab League’s 24th Ordinary Summit in Qatar where Syria and Palestine dominated the agenda Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday attended the Arab League’s 24th Ordinary Summit in the Qatari capital of Doha where he said, “We must start working for the Interim Government (of …