Birn

Dodik blaming foreign powers for the tensions in Bosnia, accused them of wanting to create "a Muslim state" and warned that any move by the European Union to exclude the Republika Srpska from its initiatives in the country would only "cement the independence" of the entity.

Kosovo's negotiator, deputy prime minister Besnik Bislimi, said he asked Serbia to open up its Yugoslav-era military and police files to help find the locations of wartime mass graves of ethnic Albanians.

Serbia has already asked for the archives of the Kosovo Liberation Army to be opened up so that the bodies of Serbs who disappeared can finally be found.

Concerns have been raised that Albania did not immediately ask Interpol to issue an international 'red notice' for the arrest of former General Prosecutor Adriatik Llalla immediately after he disappeared following the court verdict confirming his two-year prison sentence for illegally concealing assets.

But some businesses - their access to European markets limited - are licking their lips at the prospect of a single market of roughly 12 million people.

Twitter has started to label accounts belonging to various pro-government media in Serbia as state-affiliated media.

Among those it deems affiliated with Serbia's government are the dailies Srpski Telegraf, Kurir, Informer, Politika, and three free-to-air channels - Happy, Prva TV and B92, RTV Pink's online portal, as well as the news agency Tanjug.

Participants carry placards and rainbow colored flags during Sarajevo's first-ever gay pride parade, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on September 8, 2019. PHoto: EPA-EFE/Fehim Demir

The group called on Muslims and Christians to "join us against this plague".

"The Bible, like the Quran, condemns homosexuality!" it said in a Facebook post on Monday.

"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.

A report by the country's Institute of the Statistics said that pre-COVID, tourism employed about 64,000 people in 2019 and contributed some 3.23 per cent to the country's GDP.

However, tourism was hit hard in 2020 because of the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the year saw far fewer entries by Albanian or foreign visitors.

Kosovo police have confirmed that the apartment of the first displaced ethnic Serb to return to Gjakova/Djakovica in Kosovo since the war was broken into on Tuesday.

Nusret Xhurkaj, spokesperson for the Gjakova/Djakovica police, told BIRN on Wednesday that around noon a day earlier, Gasic had reported to the police that someone had broken into her apartment.

American football stars Lance Briggs, Turk McBride, and Donnie Caldwell, backed by the founder and director of the famed Exit music festival in Serbia, Dusan Kovacevic, have told BIRN that they have already picked a location for growing medicinal marijuana in North Macedonia.