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Can someone explain to me what "Systemic Racism means"? I ask this because it seems to me that it means more to 'Black Lives Matters', than it does to me.

International concern has been raised over a Kosovo police bid to take over two border crossings in the ethnic Serb north in which one officer was killed. Kosovo police units, who came under fire, pulled back after Serbs refusing to recognise their authority took up arms and mounted roadblocks. Nato-led peacekeepers moved into the area to calm the situation. The US and EU criticised the Kosovan government for acting without consulting international bodies. Continue reading the main story Analysis image of Mark Lowen Mark Lowen BBC News, Belgrade The whole episode shows just how problematic the north of Kosovo remains....

Serbian authorities have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive war crimes suspect sought by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Mr Hadzic, now 52, led Serb separatist forces during Croatia's 1991-1995 war. Within hours of the arrest, a Serbian court approved his extradition to the Hague. He has been charged with the murder of hundreds of non-Serbs. The arrest comes less than two months after Serbia caught former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic. Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed Mr Hadzic's arrest at a news conference. He said the suspect had been detained early on Wednesday in the...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made an outspoken attack on those seeking to rehabilitate former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Millions of Soviet citizens died under Stalin's rule and Mr Medvedev said it was not possible to justify those who exterminated their own people. He also warned against efforts to falsify history and defend repression. Some Russian politicians have recently tried to portray Stalin in a more positive light. Under President Medvedev's predecessor, current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Stalin was often promoted as an efficient leader who turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. Brutal regime Mr Medvedev made the unusually...

PARIS — Every time Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, appears in court on war crimes charges, he has hammered on one recurring claim: a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there. The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war. But the rumor persists, and different versions have recently emerged that line up with Mr. Karadzic’s assertion, including a new historical study of the Yugoslav wars published by...

Just when the Cold War ended is a question historians will debate for years to come. The fall of the Berlin Wall is the obvious reference point, a powerful picture of the “collapse of Communism” eagerly seized by the media. Yet the victory in Berlin obscured the high price overturning Communist rule would exact from the unique American political economy, and also exaggerated the extent of the triumph. The battle between entrenched Communist elites and the freed citizenry of Eastern Europe shows that toppling the Wall marked the beginning of a new struggle. As analysts ponder “the end of Communism,”...

DR Congo's rebel leader arrested Gen Nkunda has said he protects Congo's Tutsis from Rwandan Hutus... Gen Laurent Nkunda, leader of the strongest rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has been arrested, the military says. He was detained in Rwanda after resisting a joint Rwandan-Congolese operation to arrest him, officials say... Rwanda was obliged to arrest Gen Nkunda. The next step is for the joint Congolese-Rwandan force to tackle the FDLR Hutu rebels, some of whose leaders are accused of involvement in the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. ... The rebel leader...

Russia and Serbia have signed a controversial energy deal that will hand Russian gas giant Gazprom control of NIS, Serbia's oil monopoly. Under the deal, Gazprom is to build a gas pipeline through Serbia and an underground gas storage facility there. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and his Serbian counterpart Boris Tadic signed the agreement in Moscow. The plan is for Serbia to host part of a new pipeline called South Stream, to deliver Russian gas to southern Europe. Gazprom is taking a 51% stake in NIS for 400m euros (£380m; $560m), officials say. Diplomatic tensions Both countries signed an energy...

BELGRADE, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Serbia will demand an International Court of Justice ruling on a Western plan to recognise Kosovo as a state if the breakaway province declares independence next month, President Boris Tadic said on Monday. "A few hours ago I gave instructions ... that the state should urgently demand that the Security Council start proceedings at the International Court of Justice asking whether the independence of Kosovo would be legal," Tadic told state television RTS. "If some states recognize it, then we can start the same procedure in institutions in those countries themselves," he added, in a...

A former Georgian defence minister, Irakli Okruashvili, has been arrested on charges of money-laundering, abuse of power and extortion, officials say. It comes two days after he alleged that the president had instructed him to kill a prominent businessman - claims dismissed by the government as untrue. Mr Okruashvili, a former ally of the president, left the government in 2006. Earlier this week, he launched his own opposition party, accusing President Mikhail Saakashvili of corruption. Mr Okruashvili was detained at the headquarters of his new party, the Movement for a United Georgia. His spokeswoman described the arrest as political retaliation...

Russia clinches gas pipeline deal Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have agreed to build a new natural gas pipeline north from the Caspian Sea. Russia's President Vladimir Putin announced the deal at a summit with Central Asian leaders in Turkmenistan. The agreement ensures Russia's access to Turkmenistan's gas, and is a setback to rival US and European Union plans. They had hoped to pipe Turkmen gas across the Caspian sea via Turkey, in order to reduce the EU's dependence on Russian-controlled energy. Following two days of negotiations the presidents of the three countries, meeting in the Turkmen port city of Turkmenbashi,...

The EU should become the central international player in Bosnia, with a Special Representative taking over the responsibilities of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) which should be closed this year. Ensuring Bosnia’s Future: A New International Engagement Strategy,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the dangers Bosnia faces in 2007, after a very difficult 2006 and with new tensions looming with the approach of Kosovo’s final status decision. At risk are the survival of a unified Bosnia and the stability of much of the Western Balkans, as the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), responsible for guiding...

Bosnian Serbs face genocide trial Vujadin Popovic is accused of conspiring to massacre thousands Seven former Bosnian Serb officers have gone on trial at The Hague war crimes tribunal for alleged involvement in the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The men are pleading not guilty to a range of charges including murder, persecution and genocide. The trial, the largest yet staged at The Hague, is one of just a handful dealing with the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the UN safe haven. The massacre is the only event from the Bosnian war classified as genocide. Five of the seven standing...

BELGRADE, May 11 (Reuters) - Top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic could be in detention at the Hague tribunal "in a few days", a Serbian government minister said on Thursday. Zoran Loncar, who is a member of Serbia's National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal as well as Minister for Local Government, said he was optimistic and hopeful that the wartime Bosnian Serb Army commander would be handed over soon. Addressing a news conference after a cabinet meeting, he said he hoped "no one will be surprised" if "fulfilment of the Hague obligation" is completed within the next few...

SARAJEVO, April 19 (Reuters) - The most wanted man in the Balkans is being portrayed on the big screen this month as a vindictive army captain obsessed with gardening in a tragicomic film set during the dying days of Yugoslavia. Fugitive Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, indicted for war crimes by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, has been caricatured as Captain Rade Orchid in the film "Karaula" ("Border Post") by Croat director Rajko Grlic. The film has attracted attention across the Balkans as the first co-production by republics of the former socialist federation since its collapse in the...

SARAJEVO, April 7 (Reuters) - The police director of Bosnia's semi-autonomous Serb Republic resigned on Friday under pressure from U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte who is unhappy with his work, the republic's prime minister said. Prime Minister Milorad Dodik told a news conference in Banja Luka that the resignation of Dragomir Andan followed del Ponte's complaints that he was not doing enough to hunt down war crimes fugitives. "The main reason is that Republika Srpska has the obligation to cooperate with the Hague tribunal," Dodik said, confirming media speculation that Andan had been under pressure to resign. The Sarajevo-based...

Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Alexandria: Nov/Dec 2005.Vol.33, Iss. 11/12; pg. 3, 1 pgs Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike - with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1999. The then-Clinton Government of the United States said at the time that the strike was accidental, due to faulty maps and intelligence, but this has been disproven by the NATO sources. The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then...

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia 9 (Reuters) - The Bosnian Serb president urged top fugitives Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic on Friday to stop holding his region "hostage" and surrender for trial at the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague. Serb Republic President Dragan Cavic issued the latest of many calls to the two men to end their decade-old flight from justice, two days after the capture in Spain of top Croatian war crimes fugitive Ante Gotovina, in hiding since 2001. "I once again call on Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to surrender to The Hague tribunal," Cavic told reporters on...

The outgoing commander of international peacekeepers in Bosnia says the two top indicted war crimes suspects are very unlikely to be arrested soon. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his former top general Ratko Mladic have been on the run for 10 years, accused of genocide. British Major-General David Leakey has been commanding the EU's largest ever peacekeeping mission for the past year. He is handing over command to his Italian successor on Tuesday. General Leakey said coordinated international action had now made it virtually impossible for Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to move around freely. The EU peacekeeping...

Evan Kohlmann's book on Al-Qaeda in Bosnia will, in all likelihood, become an unspoken taboo by the journalists and the media because it renders many of them idiots, particularly the ones who have invested a vast effort in manufacturing a romantic image of Bosnian Muslims struggling for "national" independence and, perhaps intentionally, ignoring the Bosnian hospitality to the al-Qaeda seeking to establish a stronghold in Europe. With only one brief big media mention, Kohlmann's Al-Qaeda's Jihad In Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network is already showing signs, much like the Cees Wiebes' book on spies in Bosnia, that any research on al-Qaeda...