Serbia

Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazovic said that he expected that relations between Belgrade and Podgorica would improve after Serbia helped Montenegro with vaccines, but such scenario did not happen due to some political events in Montenegro that caused much more attention in Serbia, for no good reason.

The decision of the local assembly of Pantelej, a municipality of the city of Nis, the biggest city in southern Serbia, to make a convicted war criminal, Vladimir Lazarevic, an honorary citizen is not surprising and represents part of the "petty political game" of the ruling party, NGO activists told BIRN.

Croatia's political leadership, wartime generals and war veterans gathered on Thursday in the town of Knin to mark the anniversary of the victorious military offensive, Operation Storm, that practically ended the independence war in the country in 1995.

Part of the ceremony took place at the Knin Fortress, while another part was held at the town's football stadium.

As Kosovo and Serbia seem miles apart from an agreement on the normalisation of relations, a Washington-based think tank says the international community should commit more efforts to bridging their differences.

President of Serbia and Montenegro Svetozar Marovic at a Council of Europe session. Photo: EPA/BARTLOMIEJ ZBOROWSKI POLAND OUT

"Gentlemen, I want to talk a little bit more about [our] promotional focus, given the advantages gained from Storm," Tudjman said as he opened the session.

Western Balkan countries, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine continue to meet the visa liberalisation requirements and made progress in addressing last year's recommendations. That is the conclusion of the 4th report on the monitoring of the EU visa-free regime with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, as well as Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

"The situation is not positive [and] I hope that it will be solved quite soon," he told BIRN in an interview.

Szunyog reiterated that the process led by the European Commission had concluded that Kosovo had met all of the conditions for visa-free travel into the EU's passport-free Schengen zone.

Croatian Serb advocacy orgnisations and other human rights organisations on Wednesday started a six-day campaign to commemorate the Serbian civilian victims of the Croatian army's 1995 Operation "Oluja" ("Storm").

The operation terminated an ethnic Serb rebellion but also resulted in some 200,000 Serbs being expelled or fleeing the Knin region in southwest Croatia.

The chairman of the General Association of Teachers of Romania (AGIRo), Viorel Dolha, said, on Wednesday, during the International Congress of Romanian Teachers at home and abroad which is taking place in northwestern Oradea, that "without much, much, much higher pay" of teachers we cannot have an educated Romania. "We would all want an educated Romania. To have much better teachers.