The OSCE runs police development units in the western Balkans.

Stabilizing the western Balkans remains a priority on my country's foreign policy agenda.

These efforts focus on Central and Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and Southeast Asia.

In that regard, Slovakia has in recent years been particularly active in the western Balkans.

Just this past weekend, Bratislava hosted another international conference on development in the western Balkans.

Coordinated donor assistance to help countries in the Western Balkans to assess and improve airport security.

We have had wide experience in providing good offices to the countries of the western Balkans.

What Romania wishes to see in the Western Balkans is sustainable security and stability, based on democracy, freedom and tolerance.

On the topic today, the best peacebuilding offer we see for the Western Balkans is their inclusion in the mainstream European and Euro Atlantic integration processes.

But the EU has so far failed to prepare the Western Balkans for accession, in line with its leaders promise at their Thessaloniki summit in 2003 to admit the Western Balkan states when they meet the Union s standards.

Only then would genuine reconciliation of the Western Balkans be possible, thus opening the road to lasting stability and prosperity of the whole region within the European mainstream.

In his speech at the conference, His Excellency Mr. Eduard Kukan, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic and former Special Envoy of the Secretary General for the Balkans, said, The future of the western Balkans region lies, above all else, in deepening collaboration and building trust .

Romania is particularly pleased with the attention paid to the Kosovo issue, which is a challenge for the western Balkans and for the whole of Europe in the coming period.

In our opinion, the pivotal issue with regard to the stabilization of the Western Balkans is the future status of Kosovo, which remains a potential element of instability in the region.

Sleepwalking in the Balkans

The Balkans on Trial

Institution Building in the Balkans

Europe s Second Chance in the Balkans

The Group also agreed to continue engaging non participants, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, the western Balkans and key transshipment countries, to promote more robust export control standards, as required under Security Council resolution 1540 (2004).

Most international intelligence assets have left the Balkans.

Indeed, although EU integration is already bringing democracy and stability to the countries of the Balkans, it is an unfinished job, and completing that task is both vital and uncertain. The current economic crisis is leading public opinion in the western Balkans to lose confidence that peace and economic growth are still within reach, creating the risk of a possible slowdown in the integration process.

Recognizing the role of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and the stabilization and association process for the western Balkans in assisting Serbia and Montenegro in its efforts in further promoting democratic and economic reforms and in intensifying regional cooperation,

As Prosecutor Del Ponte noted this morning, this clearly illustrates that a policy of robust conditionality works and that where the fugitive indictees are located, the full engagement of national authorities in the western Balkans is critical for their arrest.

And the Balkans was a fabulous place to start.

It has zones of distribution, like Mexico and the Balkans.

Recognizing the role of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and the stabilization and association process for the western Balkans in assisting the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in its efforts in further promoting democratic and economic reforms and in intensifying regional cooperation,

Recognizing the role of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and the stabilization and association process for the western Balkans in assisting the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in its efforts in further promoting democratic and economic reforms and in intensifying regional cooperation,

Approximately 150 million people in South eastern Europe the Western Balkans, Ukraine, and Turkey aim at becoming EU citizens. Membership will obviously take time, but the accession process will drive modernization and democratic reform in a way that will strengthen all of Europe.

For instance, when I started, there were wars in the Balkans.

The prospect of EU membership is at the heart of EU policy in the western Balkans, where we are starting to show (for example in Bosnia Herzegovina) a dangerous disinclination to apply tough conditionality. We are committed to Ukraine s European vocation, but not to its EU membership.

I'll walk this dog right through that six part series on the Balkans.

The enlargement of NATO and the EU has embraced a dozen or so states in Central and Eastern Europe and in the western Balkans. But, despite these achievements, European integration is far from complete, and it will remain so until all European countries can follow the same development path.

Indeed, we need to send a strong signal to our neighbors in the Western Balkans that their European perspective is still alive, as reaffirmed by the European Heads of State in 2008. And we remain convinced of the strategic and economic benefits of bringing Turkey into the Union.

Rather, the process remains open and indeterminate. EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Štefan Füle insists that enlargement is progressing, but the western Balkans remains a fragile region, defined by mutually antagonistic nationalisms, incomplete state formation, deep and pervasive patterns of corruption, and endemic economic mismanagement.

The year 2005 is a crucial and significant one for Kosovo and the Balkans.

Briefing by Mr. Carl Bildt, Special Envoy of the Secretary General for the Balkans.

ROME Twenty years after the collapse of Yugoslavia and the communist regime in Albania, the western Balkans region is at a turning point once again. Slovenia is in the European Union, Croatia is very close to membership, and all of the region s other countries have started along the EU path.

The EU s ability to overcome enlargement fatigue and maintain its commitments to the region are also dependent on public support, so we must not stint in our efforts to convey to our citizens the political and economic advantages of accession of the countries of the western Balkans to the EU.

As the EU celebrates the accession of Croatia which will undoubtedly provide a short term boost to the reform process throughout the western Balkans it faces a profound choice in its engagement with the region. It can reinvigorate the spirit of earlier enlargement rounds, or it can succumb to enlargement fatigue.

The EU must learn from this experience to develop an accession strategy for the Western Balkans, whose development has been delayed by a complex post conflict transition process. Their special needs should be taken into account in any new EU approach, giving them hope while mitigating the fallout from Kosovo.

Still speaking of the western Balkans, we see the greatest dangers to the building of a democratic society in the region, including that of slipping back into conflict, above all in the underdeveloped state of civil society, the lack of development of the rule of law and the difficult economic situation.

55 170. Economic assistance to the Eastern European States affected by the developments in the Balkans

56 110. Economic assistance to the Eastern European States affected by the developments in the Balkans

This photo is actually from one of the missions in the Balkans in the late 1990s.

Democratic reforms are proving to be an increasingly effective cure for the instability created in the past by nationalism and ethnic strains. The key issue is to ensure that the western Balkans keeps its focus on the European agenda, which means that the EU must provide guidance and encouragement through tangible initiatives.