North Atlantic Treaty Organization

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned down a call by the U.S. to scrap a deal to buy the Russian S-400 missile defense systems, saying Washington should not conflate the issue of Ankara's procurement of defense systems with the two NATO allies' cooperation in Syria.

The prime minister of the newly named North Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, has told the Financial Times that his country's accession to NATO is a "great honor" and described the fears that he and his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras had had before signing the Prespes deal. 

But he added that this would be exceptionally difficult.

VVucic poke for the US agency during the Munich Security Conference, to say that task will be harder than the Greece-Macedonia deal, and will first have to see cancellation of Pristina's taxes on Serbian goods increased by 100 percent, and a free flow of people and goods.

Macedonian Parliament Speaker Talat Xhaferi will attend the vote in the Bulgarian National Assembly on his country's NATO Accession Protocol, reported the Bulgarian National Television. 

On 15 February, the Parliamentary Defense Committee approved the Protocol. Voting is expected to take place on Wednesday - 20 February.

AGERPRES special correspondent Florentina Peia reports: President Klaus Iohannis, addressing on Saturday the Munich Security Conference, said that the multilateral international system is under increasing pressure, pointing out that cohesion is the response to this situation, and the major goal should be an Enhanced European Engagement.

Police in North Macedonia have prevented a planned "terrorist act" by supporters of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, the Western Balkan country's Interior Ministry says, reported by Radio Free Europe. 

Regional peace and security are among Greece's key foreign policy objectives, the country's newly-installed Defense Minister Evangelos Apostolakis has said.

Apostolakis was speaking in the wake of a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels during which he held talks with his counterparts from Turkey and North Macedonia, as well as the chief of the transatlantic alliance Jens Stoltenberg.

The defense ministers of Greece and Turkey, Evangelos Apostolakis and Hulusi Akar, said on Wednesday after talks in Brussels that technical teams from both countries will be tasked with drafting a framework of confidence-building measures in a bid to reduce tensions in the Aegean.

Turkey is going ahead with a purchase of Russia's S-400 missile system, a Turkish parliamentarian said ahead of an informal Friday deadline which a US official said Washington has set for Ankara to respond to a rival US offer.

He added that "Serbia should not be allowed to benefit from Kosovo's mistakes," pointing out that currently no western partner was on Pristina's taxes on goods from central Serbia, increased by 100 percent in November.