March 24, 2016 UPDATE

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 24.03.2016, 12:30

Romanian
president Klaus Iohannis held talks in Ankara on Thursday with Turkish Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu over strengthening bilateral cooperation in the
strategic partnership between the two countries, the cooperation in the Black
Sea area and inside NATO. Also on Thursday, the Romanian president met the
speaker the Grand National Assembly, Ismail Kahraman. The two officials have underlined the fact that Romania and Turkey are key
partners at political, strategic and economic levels. On Wednesday in Ankara,
the Romanian president held talks with the country’s president Recep Tayyip
Erdogan. High on the agenda were the refugee crisis, regional security issues
as well as bilateral economic cooperation. Turkey is Romania’s first trade
partner outside the European Union and the fifth at world level.

Romania was in its second day of mourning on
Thursday for the victims of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels. Flags were
flown at half mast, while public radio and TV stations adjusted their
programmes. After signing in the book of condolences at the Belgian embassy in
Bucharest, Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos said, quote, ‘you cannot fight
terrorism by yourself, the solution is to strengthen cooperation between EU
countries’, unquote. We recall the condition of the three Romanians wounded in
the attacks is stable.

The Belgian government on Thursday acknowledged mistakes in the
anti-terror fight, but pledged to shed light in the latest Brussels attacks. EU
Interior and Justice ministers convened in a special session on Thursday to
issue a common response to the Jihadi attacks. The German and French Interior
ministers have called for a data registry that should allow a better monitoring
of plane passengers, which could prove instrumental in the anti-terror fight.
An appeal for improved information exchanges between European countries has
also been made. EU commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship,
Dimitris Avramopoulos has called on the EU countries to speed up tighter
controls at the EU’s external borders, which now should also involve citizens
in the Schengen zone. In another development Belgian police have identified
three suicide bombers in the Brussels attacks, which left 31 dead, and 300
wounded. The three are brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, who blew
themselves up at the airport terminal and in the underground. The third suicide
attacker was Najim Laarchaoui, who blew himself up at the airport. The three
are known to have also been involved in the Paris attacks in November, when 130
people were killed. A fourth man involved in Tuesday’s attacks hasn’t been
identified yet and is still on the run.

The commander of NATO forces in Europe,
general Philip Breedlove, currently on a visit to the Republic of Moldova an
ex-soviet Romanian-speaking country, on Thursday met the country’s president
Nicolae Timofti and Defence Minister Anatol Salaru. General Breedlove said that
Moldova is a trustworthy partner, which can count on NATO and the US support in
meeting its objectives. Breedlove said that Washington would continue to
support Moldova so that the country can have a well-trained army in keeping
with international standards. In 1992, Moldova joined the North-Atlantic
Cooperation Council and in 1994 the NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme.
Under its constitution, the Republic of Moldova is a neutral state, but in
spite of this fact Russian troops are still stationed on its territory.

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić has been found guilty of genocide
over the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Karadžić’s lawyer said his client would appeal. The former
Bosnian Serb leader has been found guilty of 10 out of the 11 charges he faced
at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Among the
charges is the 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in the
Srebrenica enclave, the gravest in Europe since WWll. Karadžić was captured in
Belgrade in 2008, 13 years after the arrest warrant in his name had been issued; his trial,
which ended in October 2014 lasted 497 days, during which 585 witnesses
testified.