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It looked like war. Kosovo special units would appear at border checkpoints alternatively. At sound of siren people would run to access roads blocking them, says a Serb, one of witnesses of the incident provoked by Kosovo authorities in their attempt to take by force the checkpoints at administration border crossings of Jarinje and Brnjak. The authorities in Pristina ordered the day before yesterday at 22.00 the action of conquering the checkpoints aimed to establish full control over all access roads to Kosovo. A well informed ‘Blic’ source from Pristina claims that Kosovo authorities got no green light for this...

International concern has been raised over a Kosovo police bid to take over two border crossings in the ethnic Serb north in which one officer was killed. Kosovo police units, who came under fire, pulled back after Serbs refusing to recognise their authority took up arms and mounted roadblocks. Nato-led peacekeepers moved into the area to calm the situation. The US and EU criticised the Kosovan government for acting without consulting international bodies. Continue reading the main story Analysis image of Mark Lowen Mark Lowen BBC News, Belgrade The whole episode shows just how problematic the north of Kosovo remains....

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Anders Behring Breivik said he was a boy when his life's path began to turn. It was during the first Gulf War, when a Muslim friend cheered at reports of missile attacks against American forces. "I was completely ignorant at the time and apolitical but his total lack of respect for my culture (and Western culture in general) actually sparked my interest and passion for it," the suspect in Norway's bombing and mass shooting wrote in his 1,500-page manifesto.

Kosovska Devojka The Kosovo Maiden ***** Today, June 28, 2011, marks the anniversary of perhaps the most sacred day in Serbian history. It can be said, too, that it is a sacred day in Christian history. On this day, in 1389 on Kosovo field, 70,000 Serbian men, the entire Serbian Army, gave its life to defend Christianity against the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks and Islam. They chose the "Heavenly Kingdom" over the earthly one. For them, Christianity was worth fighting for.Sincerely, Aleksandra Rebic *****

The European Union and Croatia on Friday concluded accession negotiations and thus, the Balkan country will become the 28th Member State of the organization in 2013. "We concluded today that the accession negotiations with Croatia have reached their final stage," said Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council.

Milivoj Asner Austria has been branded as a "paradise for Nazis" after it emerged that an alleged war criminal deceased in a care home in Carinthia. A spokesman for a Caritas retirement centre in Klagenfurt confirmed newspaper reports claiming that Milivoj Asner passed away today (Mon). He said the Croat perished aged 98 in the institution last week. Asner is suspected of being behind the deportation of hundreds of Serbs, Roma and members of the Jewish community in Croatia’s Ustasa movement during World War Two (WWII). Asner changed his name to Georg Aschner after fleeing to Austria when the Communists...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Ratko Mladic defiantly refused on Friday to enter pleas to what he called "obnoxious" allegations that as the Serb military chief during the Bosnian war he orchestrated the worst atrocities of a conflict that claimed 100,000 lives. He claimed he was defending "my people and my country." Appearing in a U.N. courtroom shielded by bulletproof glass 16 years after he was first indicted, Mladic told the Dutch presiding judge he was "gravely ill," but would only give details of his health out of earshot of the public. However, the ravages of time and his life as...

BELGRADE, Serbia – Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic says he's innocent of war crimes charges that include orchestrating some of the worst atrocities of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the suspect's son said Friday after visiting the former fugitive in jail. "His stand is that he's not guilty of what he's being accused of," Darko Mladic told reporters. After spending a night in jail, Mladic was due back in a Belgrade court for a second hearing on his extradition to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands on charges that include directing the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys...

BELGRADE - “Comrade Tito, we pledge to you”, rang out the lyrics of the song dedicated to former Yugoslavia president Josip Broz Tito, as the 119th anniversary of his birthday was celebrated outside the House of Flowers mausoleum in Belgrade on Wednesday. Tito’s grandson and the founder of the Communist Party of Serbia, Joska Broz, was handed around a dozen relay batons from all but one former Yugoslavia republic, while another one had come from the representatives of Libyan leader Muammar el-Gaddafi. Hundreds of former members of Tito’s youth, now mostly in their advanced ages, merrily sang the Yugoslavian national...

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic was arrested in Serbia Thursday after years on the run from international genocide charges, opening the way for the once-pariah state to approach the European mainstream. Mladic, accused of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-5 war, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said. "Mladic was handcuffed and whisked away," said the official, who said he been cooperative during the arrest. The formerly burly and widely-feared general was...

Ratko Mladic, wanted for genocide during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, has been arrested in Serbia. Serbian President Boris Tadic said the process to extradite the former Bosnian Serb army chief to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague was under way. Gen Mladic is accused over the massacre of at least 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. He was the most prominent Bosnian war crimes suspect at large since the arrest of Radovan Karadzic in 2008. The detention, the Serbian leader said, closed one chapter in Serbian history, bringing the country and the...

BELGRADE, Serbia – A man believed to be Gen. Ratko Mladic, Europe's most wanted war crimes fugitive, has been arrested in Serbia, news media reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Top Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed Monday on a resolution backing limited U.S. involvement in the NATO-led military campaign against Libya, days after the expiration of the legal deadline for President Barack Obama to seek full-blown congressional authorization. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, introduced the non-binding resolution along with five other Republicans and Democrats. (SNIP) Also backing the resolution were Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

PRIŠTINA -- Kosovo's Priština-based authorities opened embassies in a number of European countries, but are reportedly unable to provide appropriate salaries for the staff. European states are obligated to ensure payment of social welfare to a certain number of employees at the embassies opened by the Kosovo Albanian authorities, since their salaries are lower than the allowed minimum. This is according to the Priština-based Albanian language daily Zeri. These employees are classified as social cases, due to the low salaries they receive from the budget of the Kosovo government. This prompted Germany and Switzerland "to react", according to the report....

And this unthinkable outrage of ethnic cleansing, racism and Arab apartheid will be sanctioned by President Obama and the immoral United Nations under cover of the misnamed peace process. [...]Croatia allied itself with Hitler and established a Nazi state. The Croatians exterminated hundreds of thousands of Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews. If you visit the Yasenovatz death camp in Croatia, you will find Jews and Serbs buried there together in mass graves. The anti-Jewish Arab Mufti of Jerusalem during the British Mandate, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who spent many days with Hitler in his Berlin bunker plotting the destruction...

Today, May 4, 2011 is the 31st anniversary of the death of Josip Broz Tito, the lifetime President of Yugoslavia. Some adore him, some hate him, some are disgusted by the very mention of his name nowadays. Yugoslavia was the country of my birth and childhood. This is what I have to say about it, now, from a distance. The good aspects of Communism were the following: free health care for all, free education for all, including University education, high respect for workers' rights (there was no way you could get fired - unless you did something really stupid, but...

Did you know that the EU has ensured that there has been no war between its members for last 60 years?

Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro have started to count their populations as part of a year of censuses across the ethnically tense Western Balkans to keep up with EU countries doing the same... Because of the painful history organisation of the count sparked debate and controversy throughout the region: from Macedonia, where ethnic Albanians fear that their importance will be reduced, across Montenegro, where there are complaints that Serbs are being "assimilated", to Bosnia which did not even manage to adopt a census law. In Kosovo, where the last census was held in 1981 while it was still a province in...

The large military base in southern Kosovo faces reduction or closure as strategic attention shifts from the Balkans, US ambassador Christopher Dell tells Jane's.

March 27, 2011 Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci sees echoes of his country's own history in the unfolding events in Libya. In an exclusive interview with RFE/RL's Balkan Service correspondent Albana Isufi, Thaci likens NATO's involvement in Libya to its 1999 bombing of Serbia. RFE/RL: Mr. Prime Minister, 12 years ago, freedom was the most important thing for Kosovo. Today, Kosovo is free, but what are its challenges? Hashim Thaci: Today, Kosovo is a free, independent, and sovereign state, proud of its powerful, legitimate, democratic, and multiethnic institutions. With a certain Euro-Atlantic perspective it wants to be part of NATO...