Politics

556 local and 179 foreign observers monitor elections

BELGRADE -- The Center for Free Election and Democracy (CeSID) and the Novi Sad-based NGO COR are the only local organizations which will monitor parliamentary elections.

Dobroslav Dimitrov, an MP of Bulgaria's opposition GERB party, is stepping down from his post in Parliament.

The move is not a form of dissent from the party, as Dimitrov revealed that his plans were to pursue specialization abroad, Standartnews reported.

The prosecutor’s national coordinator for corruption cases, Laura Pula, on Friday said that from November of 2013 to February this year, prosecutors across the country had raised 83 indictments for corruption against 196 people.

BELGRADE - The campaign ended for the early parliamentary elections that will be held in Serbia on Sunday, March 16, and election silence will be in force until the close of polls at 8 p.m. the same day.

In these polls, 6,767, 324 citizens will be eligible to vote and elect 250 MPs for the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.

Five members of Bulgaria's ultranationalist Ataka party will travel to Crimea as monitors of Sunday's referendum for the autonomous province's future.

The leader of the party, Volen Siderov believes the new leadership in Kiev is illegitimate, and the result of a coup carried out by extremists, terrorists, and pro-fascist organizations, the daily 24Chasa reports.

"NATO opened Pandora's box in Kosovo"

BERLIN -- German MP Gregor Gysi said in the country's parliament on Thursday that "NATO and the EU are partially responsible for the current situation in Ukraine."

This is because of the policy they pursued in previous years, the leader of the left-wing political party The Left noted.

Non-adherence to the law might lead Bulgaria to losing its voice within the EU, President Rosen Plevneliev said on Friday.

Speaking in Parliament, he reminded that a roadmap had already been approved by Brussels listing a set of conditions on which a member state could be deprived of its voting rights regarding EU decisions or, even worse, could be expelled from the union.

Montenegro's Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Predrag Boskovic, said on Thursday that at least 108 families, mostly from the Pec, Djakovica, Kline areas, wish to return to Kosovo in 2014 if the Montenegrin and Kosovo authorities can provide adequate conditions.

Six Russian Su-27 fighter jets and three military transport planes have been deployed at Bobruisk airfield in Belarus Thursday to boost the airspace defenses of the two countries.

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko has invited Russian forces to fend off potential NATO threat, Russian RT news reports.

TV reporting on the Serbian election campaign has given a distinct advantage to the Progressive Party, research by the Bureau for Social Research, BIRODI, suggests.