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Dancing Alexander-style, Down Under

15 March 2010 | By Sinisa-Jakov Marusic

Sinisa-Jakov Marusic The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.


British Ambassador to Serbia Pushes Cooperation
16 March 2010 | Bojana Barlovac

British Ambassador to Serbia Stephen Wordsworth said that Serbia is not being asked to recognise Kosovo's independence, but argued that Belgrade must establish a model of cooperation with Pristina.

EU Enlargement Commissioner to Visit Western Balkans
16 March 2010 | Bojana Barlovac

EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele is set to begin his first Western Balkans tour on Wednesday, with scheduled stops in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo.

Radic et al: Increased Sentences or Retrial
16 March 2010 |

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina calls for an increase in the sentences handed down to the three indictees convicted of crimes committed in Vojno, near Mostar, while the Defence calls for the first instance verdict to be overturned and a retrial to be conducted.



Experts Reject Greek-Albanian Land Grab Claim

Tirana | 11 May 2009 |
 
Base line exmaple
Base line exmaple
Maritime law experts contacted by Balkan Insight have questioned the accuracy of local media reports of a land grab by Greece of Albanian territory, after the two neighbours signed an agreement to delineate the continental shelf in the Ionian Sea.

The agreement signed by Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis two weeks ago in Tirana, created a stir of controversy in the local media which accused the Albanian government of giving 225 square kilometers of its territorial waters to its southern neighbour.

The media accused Berisha and the Ministry of Defense of not delineating the division of the continental shelf according to the equidistance principle of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, on which the agreement was based, a charge which the Ministry of Defense has flatly denied.

Thomas Dehling the head of the Hydrographic Division in the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, told Balkan Insight that the equidistance principle is not the only applied when delineating the continental shelf between two countries.

“It is not unusual to agree upon a delimitation different from an equidistance line especially when agreements are older than the latest edition of UNCLOS, besides, rules other than the equidistance are also discussed for an equidominance line,” said Dehling.

An Albanian Navy expert who spoke to Balkan Insight on condition of anonymity described the media reports as misunderstanding the notions and principles of equidistance outlined in the UNLOCOS treaty, when reporting that some of the coordinates in the agreement did not have equidistance between the two countries.

“In the media reports the coordinates distance is measured with the land territory, while according to UNLOCOS the equidistance measurement is made on the basis of the base line,” he said.

A baseline is the line from which the seaward limits of a state's territorial sea and certain other maritime zones of jurisdiction are measured. Normally, a sea baseline follows the low-water line of a coastal state. When the coastline is deeply indented, has fringing islands or is highly unstable, straight baselines may be used.

(reporting by Besar Likmeta)
 



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Comments:
Greek-Albania
2009-05-13 01:53:10
Why are you worried,Greece is mostly Albanians for centuries.A few km.here few thousands of Albanians in Athens,what is the problem?

Republic of Tetovo et. al
2009-05-14 10:58:06
Albanians? As in guest workers, fine, great? No problem with Republic of Tetovo, either, right?

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