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2 September 2006 | 15:23 | FOCUS News Agency Belgrade. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Serbian President Boris Tadic will sign Thursday a Status of Forces Agreement /SOFA/ in Washington between the government of the Republic of Serbia and the USA. The Agreement is connected to the protection of the status, the access and the use of the military infrastructure in the Republic of Serbia, RTS reported. It will deepen the cooperation in the sphere of defense between Serbia and the USA based on an absolute respect of the two countries’ sovereignty and the UN regulations. Besides,...

30 August 2006 | 14:52 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. USA military forces started preparing for their pullout of the Eagle base near Tuzla, Serbian agency TANJUG informs citing Bosnian newspaper Oslobojdenje. The news of the pullout of the American troops has caused concern among Sarajevo political circles. Citing reliable sources the Bosnian newspaper announced the Americans will leave the base by the end of the year as they will be replaced by a Dutch battalion. The chair of the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency Sulejman Tihic could not confirm definitely the news of the pullout of the US troops...

Sarajevo, 24 August (AKI) - Bosnian Muslim leader Sulejman Tihic has told local Serbs to stop talking about a possible referendum on independence, because Bosnia was indivisible and those who don’t like it should leave the country. Tihic, who currently chairs Bosnia’s three-man rotating state presidency, has been an outspoken advocate of Muslim demands for the abolition of Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska (RS). Local Serbs for their part have threatened to hold a referendum on independence. The quarrel prompted the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Christian Schwarz Schilling, to intervene last week demanding that politicians on...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aug. 23 — For a month usually devoid of political activity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, August has been unusually fraught, as several incidents have raised ethnic tensions to a level not seen in years. On Aug. 11, a bomb severely damaged the tomb of Alija Izetbegovic, the former Bosnian president. Last week in eastern Bosnia, a group of Muslims forced their way into a Serbian church built on the former site of a mosque. And the broadcast of a videotape showing the wartime killing of an unarmed Bosnian Serb by Muslims prompted calls for a senior...

Forensic experts have excavated over 1,000 bodies from a mass grave in the village of Kamenica in eastern Bosnia.

Serbias Foreighn Ministery oficialy strongly supported UN resolution on sending 15,000 peacekeepers to south Lebannon expressing hope that UN securiti councile will be as much as firm regarding future status of Kosovo and Serbias legal claims as souvereign nation. Serbias foreighn ministery said "Hezbollah millitants are eaqualy danger in their beligrance and unacceptance of existing state of Israel as are Kosovo (Muslim) Albanians in their belligrance and millitantism and unacceptance of souvereign borders of Serbia." This i sthe first time that Serbia is officialy eaqulising its own problems with problems of Israel.

A senior Serbian government official has said she would accept a partition of Kosovo if no other long-term solution can be found. The president of Serbia's Co-ordination Centre for Kosovo, Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, also said no Serb leader would ever sign a deal giving Kosovo independence. She said Belgrade's policy was for Kosovo province to have substantial autonomy within the Serbian state. Kosovo is technically part of Serbia but has been run by the UN since 1999. The vast majority of Kosovo's population are ethnic Albanian who have been pressing for independence. Kosovo's Prime Minister Agim Ceku has ruled out...

WASHINGTON DC -- 25 U.S. Senators are asking that the U.S. president supports the democratically elected Serbian government. The letter argues that Serbia’s role is of vital importance for the future of South-Eastern Europe and America’s regional interests and that Belgrade has grown into a strong U.S. regional partner. “In order to help transform Serbia, the U.S. should support the reforms in the military and the security sectors, encourage cooperation with the Serbian Army and enabling its officers to attend military colleges and courses in the U.S.�, the letter said. The Senators remind that it is Serbia’s strategic goal to...

Footage shown on Serbia RTS central TV shoved amateur footage of muslim Bosnian general Atif Dudakovic openlz ordering his soldiers via hand-radio to burn Christian Serb villages. tape sows Dudakovic telling "Burn this village, burn this haste, burn it all" ant than it ontinues "The boys are already down there, Iw ordered village to be burned" tape continues with male voice telling Dudakovic "This i sSerbian, this is all on fire" This was un continuation of Croate-Muslim offensive "Oluja" (Storm) that ethicaly cleansed 250,000 Christian Serbs in september 1995. During Dudakovic action over 870 Christian Serb civilliand and 400 soldiers...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hizbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far. PHOTOS The week's events from around the world, captured in pictures. » VIEW THIS WEEK'S PHOTOS Diplomatic Dispatches Nora Boustany 's column reporting on Washington's diplomatic community appears each Wednesday and Friday in The Post....

BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 4, 2006 Friday Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based Radio B92 on 4 August Belgrade, Zagreb, Banja Luka, 4 August: The 11th anniversary of Croatia's military Operation Storm was marked with a commemoration in St Mark's Church and a gathering in Nikola Pasic Square [in central Belgrade] today. Following the commemoration, a protest walk from St Mark's Church to Nikola Pasic Square was organized by the Association of Families of Missing Persons from Krajina [part of Croatia formerly with Serb majority]. A resolution was read out in Nikola Pasic Square to several hundred Serbs from...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - The major powers voiced concern on Friday at tensions in northern Kosovo, where there are growing signs of Serb resistance as the majority Albanian province pushes for independence from Serbia. It did not specify which developments. Reports suggest Serbs there are strengthening what they say are self-defense groups made up of former military and police officers. "Both Belgrade and Pristina should take immediate steps to reduce tensions in northern Kosovo, particularly to encourage responsible leadership and build confidence among communities," said the statement, issued by the U.S. liaison office in Kosovo on behalf of the United States,...

On Serbia and Madeleine Albright. 7/29/2006, Volume 011, Issue 44 SPARRING OVER SERBIA STEPHEN SCHWARTZ's "Free at Last" (July 24) left me greatly surprised and somewhat disappointed, both by the distortion of historical and political facts and by the argumentation based on malicious and trivial political comments. Describing Serbia as a "mafia state" is intentionally overlooking the well-known fact that the Milosevic regime met its end when the Serbian people, investing enormous effort and encountering the greatest possible risk, overthrew it in their bloodless revolution of October 2000. Serbian democratic authorities, in their crackdown on organized crime, and with the...

Tomislav Nikolic said that the armed defense must be the last resort, should the future Kosovo status talks produce independence for the province. ;We have already had a chance to defend Kosovo against much stronger enemies�, Nikolić said in an interview with the Serbian state television (RTS), stressing that armed defense is the last option and that diplomacy must be given every chance. Nikolić said that the Radicals will take it to the streets and lead the citizens against the Serbian prime minister and president, Boris Tadić and Vojislav Koštunica, should they fail to start with preparations to return Kosovo...

Writing for an outfit called FamilySecurityMatters.org last week, Weekly Standard contributor and longtime champion of Balkan Muslims Stephen Schwartz describes an overnight bus ride from Kosovo's capital Pristina to a resort town in Montenegro: "A man behind me began speaking almost immediately and without stopping, in Albanian — which I understand…insistently focused on the nature of G-d (a favorite subject for Islamic fundamentalists), [and on] the nefarious influence of Sufis who thought they could reinterpret the faith, the evil intentions of Americans, Iraq, and bloodshed. I was startled because it is rare to hear Albanians, after the rescue of Kosovo,...

A prominent Serbian Orthodox bishop Thursday said the U.S. was allowing Islamic extremists to wage war on Christians in Kosovo by deciding not to oppose Kosovo's independence. Kosovo is an autonomous province in Serbia with a population of about 2 million, most who are ethnic Albanian and Muslim. It is currently administered by the United Nations Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), but negotiations which began this year are expected to eventually result in independence for the province. However, Dr. Artemije Radosavljevic on Thursday issued a warning about the prospect of and independent Kosovo. "At a time when America is...

Three men have gone on trial in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, charged with plotting terrorist attacks. Mirsad Bektasevic, Cesur Abdulkadir and Bajro Ikanovic were arrested in 2005. Prosecutors say they planned an attack in Bosnia or another European nation to force the government involved to pull out troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Police say they found a large cache of explosives and firearms in raids on the suspects' apartments. The suspects are pleading not guilty to the charges. The three men were arrested in October and December last year near Sarajevo, along with two other men who were later released...

PRIZREN, Kosovo -- Being a monk is never easy. But Brother Benedict, a friendly 29-year-old with the ever-present beard that characterizes Orthodox Christian clerics, cheerfully welcomed three foreign visitors to his humble abode. Unfortunately, any Serb who travels outside of few remaining enclaves does so at his own risk. At the quasi-border dividing Serbia from Kosovo (which nominally remains part of Serbia), drivers routinely replace their Serbian license plates with ones marked Kosovo to disguise their identities. To do otherwise would risk not only their cars but their lives. Even foreigners are at risk. Some British tourists recently were roughed...

It is always very hard to focus on broad pictures when so many fires are in need of being put out. But it is imperative to keep in mind in the ongoing conflict Iran’s long-standing ties not only to Hezbollah, but to Islamists in Bosnia, a relationship that spans more than a decade. There is concern among Bosnian contacts that, if Iran feels things are going badly in Lebanon and that the war needs another front, it would take little to ignite Bosnia. It would not be hard to do and the international presence in Bosnia is greatly reduced. So...

The Bosnian government is bringing to a close five months of work reviewing how some 1,500 people - most of them fighters who came to Bosnia from Muslim countries during the 1992-1995 war - gained Bosnian citizenship. ... The 1,500 naturalized Bosnian citizens were given until last week to provide all documents used to gain Bosnian citizenship between 1992-1996. ... The Syrian-born Abu Hamza is also among those who are facing deportation. He arrived in Croatia in the early 1990s as a student and moved to Bosnia at the beginning of the war. Investigators say he lied on his citizenship...

By Mark John BRUSSELS, July 7 (Reuters) - NATO is looking at ways to allay a growing sense of isolation in Serbia, possibly with an offer of closer ties short of a full partnership, alliance diplomats said on Friday. The alliance has denied Serbia and its neighbour Bosnia entry to its Partnership for Peace programme, the first rung on the ladder to possible membership, until fugitive Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects General Ratko Mladic and wartime leader Radovan Karadzic are brought to international justice. But now Montenegro has ended its union with Serbia and Kosovo is set to go its...

"As todays Belgrade "Novosti" dayly sais, sources from Serbian goverment confirmet that Amrti Akhtisaary, UN negotiator on kosovo status talks have offered to Serbian goverment, facing his own failiure as mediator of negotiations, DEAL in which Serbia should give indipendance to Muslim occupied Kosovo region and recive in return 1. Serbia joining "Partnership For Peace" without extradicting Ratko Mladic to hague 2. Serbia Joining to EU, without extradicing ratko Mladic to Hague 3. US financial aid 4. EU financial founds access 5. Growing of direct foreighn investments in Serbia. As source add, this was rejected strongly by Serbian goverment, that...

CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo (Army News Service, July 5, 2006) –Soldiers from the Texas National Guard’s 36th Infantry Division and Multi-National Task Force (East) marked America’s 230th year of independence during a July 4 ceremony on the Camp Bondsteel parade field. Brig. Gen. Darren Owens, commanding general of MNTF(E), spoke about America’s struggle for independence. “We as Americans can proudly say the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, gave birth to the ideals of freedom that others in the world only dream about,” Owens said. “We are free to love, worship and live as we want – but freedom does have...

Some of the Dutch United Nations soldiers who failed to prevent the massacre of Srebenica in July 1995 gave the Serbs a back-slapping welcome, handed over their uniforms and even actively helped to separate Bosnian men from their families, say relatives of the 8,000 men and boys who were murdered. A German attorney is preparing a lawsuit against the UN and the Netherlands. They are unbelievable scenes that Sabaheta Fejzic, a bookkeeper from Vogosca near Srebenica, will never forget. War had been raging for years in Bosnia, and in the summer of 1995 everyone in Srebrenica was scared to death...

Belgrade, 2 July 06. (Tanjug) – The Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija announced that UNMIK Chief Soren Jesen-Petersen “leaving Kosovo in an armored vehicle”, showed that the international community did not fulfill its basic task for seven years, such as the creation of elementary security conditions of free living and freedom of movement. “Petersen’s earlier statement, stated that he is leaving Kosovo for private reasons. Before his departure he clearly stated slogans on behalf of Albanian lobbyists who use all means in the fight for independence of the Serbian southern province”, states the Center at the Sunday announcement. Coordination...

Serbia must accept a "different vision" for the future make-up of south-east Europe or face increasing isolation and diminishing prospects of closer relations with the European Union, Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, will tell Vojislav Kostunica, his Serbian counterpart, tomorrow --- Belgrade is under pressure from the UK, US and the UN administration in Kosovo to accept independence as the "least problematic solution". However, Mr Kostunica faces formidable domestic pressure not to abandon Serbia's historical claims to the province, now dominated by ethnic Albanians. Belgrade continues to offer "the widest possible autonomy" without conceding sovereignty. --- Serbian state-run newspapers...

Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo, who live "surrounded by barbed wire and tanks". www.novosti.co.yu Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade June 24, 2006 By D. Sekulic, June 23, 2006 Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most...

A picturesque valley in the western province of Kosovo is home to the largest and most urgently preserved monastery in Serbia. The 14th century Visoki Decani monastery has not only survived the passage of time but also the ravages of war. Even though around half the Serb population fled a wave of revenge attacks after the war, the 100,000 who stayed are still targeted by sporadic violence. Stoning of police and attacks on individuals are not uncommon. In 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, who was president at the time, led troops against Albanian forces in an effort to reclaim parts of Kosovo....

A picturesque valley in the western province of Kosovo is home to the largest and most urgently preserved monastery in Serbia. The 14th century Visoki Decani monastery has not only survived the passage of time but also the ravages of war. Even though around half the Serb population fled a wave of revenge attacks after the war, the 100,000 who stayed are still targeted by sporadic violence. Stoning of police and attacks on individuals are not uncommon. In 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, who was president at the time, led troops against Albanian forces in an effort to reclaim parts of Kosovo....

PRISTINA, Serbia - Kosovo's top leaders travel to Washington next week to hold talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the president's office said Friday. President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku are to meet Rice on Monday, said Muhamet Hamiti, the president's adviser. Sejdiu will visit the United States for the first time since he was elected in February, succeeding Kosovo's late President Ibrahim Rugova, who died of lung cancer earlier this year. During his trip, Sejdiu will meet other officials in the State Department and the White House, the statement said. Ceku is also scheduled to...

PRISTINA, Serbia-Two British tourists were shot at Thursday in western Kosovo, officials said. No one was injured. The shooting occurred near the western village of Babaloc, an ethnic Albanian area, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the province's capital, Pristina, Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elshani said. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear. Security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident, said the tourists' vehicle bore registration plates from Serbia's capital, Belgrade.

But Kerry may have some competition. On Memorial Day, another former Democratic presidential candidate, retired General Wesley Clark, tried to rewrite the history of the war in Kosovo in order to make himself into a great military hero. "Last week," he said, "I returned to Kosovo for the first time since I retired from military service. For me, this trip was very personal. In 1999, I commanded the NATO forces that stopped the genocide against ethnic Albanians by Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian forces." That sounds pretty impressive-commanding the forces that stopped genocide. Too bad it's not true. Genocide is...

Sarajevo, 8 June (AKI) - Bosnian Muslim religious leader Reiss ul-Ulema Mustafa Ceric has accused the country's Catholic and Orthodox Christians of undermining the country and advocating the partitioning of Bosnia. Ceric was quoted by the Sarajevo daily, Dnevni Avaz, as saying that former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia's Franjo Tudjman deal, allegedly made in the early nineties to divide Bosnia, had been taken over by the Serbian Orthodox and Croatian Catholic Church. As a proof of an alleged conspiracy, Ceric said that the bishops of the two churches have been meeting without Muslim representatives. "It is well known...

So let's talk about Yugoslavia! Finally, after more than a decade of one-way journalistic language that in no way made sense, an opening seems to have been created in France in the press (1), and perhaps not only in France, to speak about things differently? or simply to start speaking about Yugoslavia. A debate, a discussion, a discourse, a fruitful discussion seems to have become possible, a general questioning, of reports that speak for themselves... Previously: nothing, and still more nothing? defamations instead of a debate, expressed by exclusively prefabricated words, repeated ad infinitum, used like an automatic weapon. So...

(Translation from Serbian) " ...Negotiations between Tudjman and Milosevic to devide Bosnia are nowdays held in different manner. Catolic and Ortodox bishops are holding series of meetings without inviting us. That is something problem, that is call to war." Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric said to gratuates uf Islamic school in Sarajevo that attacks on Islamic community in Bosnia must stop, also he attacked local TV station for accusing Islamic community in Bosnia that it "Builds Teheran out of Sarajevo" "

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP)--Bosnian authorities, responding to media reports that they gave Canada information leading to the arrest of 17 militant suspects there, said Wednesday only that they had cooperated with intelligence services in many countries. Leader of Bosnian Muslim Wahabis, Enes Mujkanovic, calls for destruction of the West. Canada arrested the suspects Friday and Saturday and said it had foiled plans for attacks in southeast Canada. Officials said the arrests were ordered after the group acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate, which can be mixed with fuel oil to make a powerful explosive. The Bosnian daily newspaper Nezavisne Novine from...

BBC Monitoring European 5 June 2006 Serbian researchers say 5,515 Serbs killed in wartime Sarajevo Source: SRNA news agency, Bijeljina, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 5 Jun 06 Text of report by Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA BELGRADE, June 5 (Srna) -- Milivoje Ivanisevic, director of the [Belgrade] Centre for Researching Crimes against Serbs, has pointed out that 5,515 Serbs were killed in Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995. "We have the lists of all the names of victims from all municipalities and settlements in Sarajevo. We have been patiently collecting evidence of atrocities committed by Muslims. For this reason, we have the name...

NOVI PAZAR -- Ten young men donning long beards, short pants and white hats broke up a concert of the Balkanika orchestra. The hooligans were dressed like members of the vehabit movement. They climbed up onto the stage and threw around the instruments that were set up for the musicians to play. One of the young men toko the microphone and told those attending the concert: “Brothers, go home, they are working against Islam here. This is Satan’s work.� He then threw the microphone, which was damaged, as were the speakers, mixing board and some of the lighting. Four police...

There is no evidence to suggest that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was poisoned, according to a United Nations investigation. The Hague tribunal's report said he died of a heart attack - despite claims "in some segments of the media that he was the victim of murder". Mr Milosevic died in his cell on 11 March while on trial for war crimes. The report said security breaches did allow him to self-medicate but said he had received "proper care"... Doctors from Serbia, Russia, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, who had treated him before or during his time in detention were...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Granting independence to Serbia's southern province of Kosovo against the will of Serbia would destabilize the Balkans, Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned on Tuesday. The United Nations is mediating talks on Kosovo's future status, which Western diplomats say are likely to conclude with a form of independence by the end of the year. Serbia is adamantly opposed to such an outcome. "I am very afraid of the possible imposed solution against the will of Belgrade of turning Kosovo into a state," Draskovic told a news conference. "The whole region, I think, would inevitably face turbulence." The...

Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians? by John Couretas, Director of Communications This week, Montenegro voted to end its union with Serbia, the last remaining alliance of the former Yugoslav federation. News accounts of the vote frequently add matter-of-factly that Kosovo, the Serb province placed under the administration of the United Nations in 1999, is next in line to gain its independence and probably by the end of the year. But anyone who cares about religious freedom, the rights of minorities, and the rule of law should be highly skeptical of an independent Kosovo. Since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign...

The former US general who commanded NATO's 1999 air war against Serbia predicted its southern province of Kosovo would become independent within months. Wesley Clark told Kosovo Albanian leaders in Pristina he had confidence in their "strong, positive and visionary proposals" to find a solution for Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999. "I am confident that this issue will be solved very soon, and probably in few months, Kosovo will become independent and will respect the rights of all citizens," said Clark. "I believe that Kosovo will be welcomed into the family of...

Thu 25 May 2006 11:52 AM ET (Updates with U.N. statement, details) PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, May 25 (Reuters) - U.N. police in Kosovo fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of ethnic Albanians who stoned a United Nations convoy escorting Serb defence lawyers in the west of the province on Thursday. Three U.N. police officers and one translator were wounded when villagers blocked a road and lobbed stones at vehicles escorting two Serb members of a defence team accredited to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, a U.N. statement said. "Police then had to clear the crowd,...

24 May 2006 | 20:14 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. The Muslims gave away a state to the Montenegrins because if they hadn’t taken a mass part in the referendum for the state status and hadn’t voted for its independence the country would not have received its independence, the leader of the Islamic community in Montenegro Rifat Fejzic stated cited by Serbian agency TANJUG. “The Muslims voted for Montenegro’s independence so that the Great Serbia and its ideas would come to an end,” he said and added that now “Montenegro has the great obligation to value that which the...

Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade Wednesday, May 17, 2006 We torched everything! (transcripts of Kosovo Albanians) By Zeljko Pantelic, May 16, 2006 Organized Albanian criminal groups involved in the sale of drugs, people, illegal immigration, etc. were behind the March 2004 pogrom against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. This conclusion follows from taped telephone conversations between leaders of Albanian mafia organizations which since 2003 have been illegally transferring hundreds of illegal emigrants per year from Kosovo to Italy, and who were uncovered by Italian police at the beginning of this week. By wiretapping the conversations of Albanian criminals, investigating prosecutors in...

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses why all anti-jihadists should support Serbia today Monday, 15 May 2006 The jihad in Serbia is one that is obscured in a particularly vexing way. Accordingly it must be emphasized that in alerting people to attacks on the Serbs, and to the destruction of ancient churches and monasteries, and on the infiltration into the area of Arabs bringing a brand of Islam quite different from the relaxed, syncretistic local version (not exactly full-bodied Islam in practice, because that local practice was affected by the centuries of proximity to non-Muslims, and to the...

Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku has says independence for mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo of Serbia's government in Belgrade is near. "A great dream of independence is close and it is only months away," said Ceku Monday in his regular weekly address in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province whose population of 1.8 million is 90 percent ethnic-Albanian........

Skoplje, May 13 (SRNA) - In the Tetovo village of Neprosteno for the past 20 or so days armed Kosovo Albanians, former members of the KLA, have been patrolling in order to provoke new ethnic tensions in Macedonia in this and other neighboring villages with an ethnic Albanian population, writes the Skoplje daily "Vecer". According to the sources of that Skoplje paper, the leaders of the group are putting pressure on the Albanian political parties in Macedonia, the Democratic Union for Integration and the Democratic Party of Albanians to demand the annexation of a part of western Macedonia to neighboring...

For a long time the proponents of Kosovo’s independence have acted as if the game was up, that all that remained was for the “international community� to settle on the formula for independence—and for Serbia to sign on the dotted line under pressure. Until recently, many old Balkan hands in the world’s capitals that matter expected that by the end of 2006 it would be all over. There are recent signs, however, that “it� won’t be over that soon, and that the outcome is by no means preordained. It did not look that way when the United Nations abandoned its...

Russian state-owned company Technopromexport has announced it will build a thermal power plant in Serbia within three years. The company Wednesday signed a contract with Serbia and Switzerland's Mentor Energy, company officials said. The construction of the plant, with two 450-megawatt blocks, is estimated to cost $877 million. Maja Gojkovich, mayor of the Serbian town Novi Sad, where the plant will be built, said the project will greatly benefit the economy of the town and the country, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. "It will provide work for 5,000 to 6,000 Serbs and guarantee orders for a number of Serbian...