OHRID (AP) – Kosovo will be a key issue on the agenda of a summit of leaders from Central and Southeastern Europe that begins today. But it will also be notably absent. Organizers of the gathering at a lakeside resort in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) did not invite President Fatimir Sejdiu of Kosovo, whose ethnic Albanian leaders enraged Serbia by declaring independence on February 17. Serbia, one of the summit participants, has refused to recognize the territory’s declared separation. FYROM President Branko Crvenkovski, host of the two-day summit at the Ohrid resort, said a decision to invite neighboring Kosovo would have required consensus from all participants of the 18 nations that make up the Central European Initiative, formed in 1989 to pursue regional cooperation. Kosovo’s leaders reacted with annoyance and insisted an independent Kosovo was a reality that had to be recognized. “Nobody can ignore the independence of Kosovo,” Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci told reporters on Tuesday while criticizing Skopje.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The chief foreign policy adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with the leader of Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region yesterday, the first direct high-level contact between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish region. The Turkish envoy, Ahmet Davutoglu, met with Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani before separately meeting with Nerchivan Barzani, Iraqi officials said. “This is the first time a meeting has taken place between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan government,” Falah Mustafa, foreign policy chief in the Kurdish regional government, told Reuters. “This is a positive and correct step. We discussed all of the political and economic issues and we agreed to hold further meetings in the future.” Asked if they discussed the presence of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatist guerrillas in northern Iraq, Mustafa said: “Of course we discussed it, but only in general terms, not in specifics. And we agreed to find a peaceful solution.”

Albania and Croatia formally began negotiations yesterday with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to become the 27th and 28th members of the transatlantic alliance, NATO said. “The accession talks cover the political, military resources, security and legal commitments of NATO membership,” NATO said in a statement on its website. The two once-communist Balkan states were invited to open negotiations at a summit of NATO leaders in Bucharest at the start of April. Once talks are completed, Tirana and Zagreb will be ready to sign a membership protocol. (AFP)

NATO launched Wednesday a revision of its security operations in Kosovo in response to developments in the former Serbian province since it declared independence, a spokesman said. The move, launched by ambassadors in Brussels, was made to adapt NATO’s 17,000-strong KFOR mission to the “evolution of the situation on the ground in Kosovo,” said spokesman James Appathurai. (AFP)