The first round of the elections for the lower house of the Parliament in Egypt ended with turnout running high on the part of the voters and reaching in some sections 70% turnout. The preliminary results show the Islamic parties “Freedom and Justice” (by unofficial account ca 40%) with Mohamed Morsi as their leader (of the Muslim Brotherhood movement) and the Salafist al-Nour party win by a wide margin in 6 out of 9 governorates (out of total 27 governorates) Cairo, Alexandria, Asyut, Red sea, Luxor, Al-Faiyum, Damietta, Port Said and Kafr el-Sheikh. The Egyptian Bloc – an alliance of secular and liberal parties and one of the oldest liberal parties “Wafd” prove to be their main political opponent.

The Egyptian Revolution paved the way for starting anew clean sheet or a new chapter but this is theory, which is much easier to achieve than in practice. Since the revolution, there have been many conflicts between civilians and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) and Muslims and Christians as well. The epicenter of president Hosni Mubarak’s ousting, Tahrir square, is filled yet again with more demonstrators wanting SCARF to hand its power to a civilian government. There has been more dead, the temporary government has submitted its resignation to SCAF and just days from the official parliamentary elections (28^th of November), everything is unsure. There are different parties and their alliances, as well as the technical difficulties of actually voting as well as the constraints and limitations to the future of Egypt.

The abrupt rise of tensions in Kosovo in July, coming to loss of lives, confirmed our earlier prognosis that the former Serb province remained the riskiest part of Western Balkans. Moreover, this is not because Kosovo is a comparatively young state declared its independence in February 2008 but mainly due to the severe confrontation between the Serbian and Albanian communities. It is precisely this mutual stubbornness as well as the division of the international factor on the subject of the future of Kosovo, did not permit the reaching of an agreement acceptable to the parties involved in the crisis. Such an agreement similar to the Dayton peace accords for Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995) or to the Ohrid peace agreement in the R. Of Macedonia (2001), which sometimes also severely criticized manage to secure a comparative ethnical peace in the respective countries.

The situation in Egypt has been changed dramatically since the eve of the year. The Egyptian revolution followed the path of its predecessor in Tunisia. The revolt didn’t only topple the ex-president, but also the longstanding sources of power. Egypt has witnessed a lot of events since the revolution. Instability swept the country and disputes emerged between various political parties and groups and between same political subjects and the Ruling Military Council. The situation seems to be pessimistic and ambiguous compared to the first flourishing days of the revolution. It is difficult to predict the coming future precisely, taking into consideration the liquid and ongoing situation in Egypt.

In general the traditional parties did not play very important during the eighteen days that stretched from the 25th of January and stepped down until Mubarak in 11th of February. Now some of these parties are trying to create for itself a presence on the political scene and to take advantage of the existing infrastructure - offices, lists of members, organizational structure, and experiences of election etc. Al-Wafd (delegation) Party is one of the most important of these parties and its history extends to the leadership of the 1919 revolution against British occupation. It is a liberal oriented party which played recently a key role in advocating an alliance with a lot of parties including the Muslim Brotherhood’s party “Freedom and Justice” to agree on a common agenda for national action. Leftist parties “Arabic Naserist Party”, “Socialist Party of Egypt”, “Progressive Unionist Party Assembly” suffered from splits and internal divisions, especially that some of their members got out of the parties and founded new parties after the revolution. The party of “Tomorrow” (Al-Gad) and “Dignity” (Al-Karama) – their leaders Ayman Nour and Hamdien Sabbah”, respectively, are keeping his intention to run for the presidency. The fate of the two parties most likely will be linked to the extent of the success of their leaders to get a reasonable proportion of the vote in the presidential race. Democratic Front Party - Centrist Party began by a split in the “Muslim Brotherhood” movement in the 1990s, although the party did not enjoy the presence in the large pre-revolutionary era, but its chances may be better than others in as it occupies an intermediate place between the forces of Islamic and liberal parties.

In July the situation in the Western Balkans remains complex and dynamic. In some areas with mixed ethnic population it was nearly a crisis. The factors effecting its nature remained active – the aspiration of some of the states to meet the requirement for EU membership, the ethnic and religious nationalism, separatism, the severe political confrontation, the influence of the organized crime and corruption, the dire socio-economic state.

The attention of the international community was attracted to Kosovo and mainly to the situation in its northern areas. Pursuing its main goal Pristina continued its policy of achieving the recognition of its independence from Belgrade (Kosovo was recognized by more than 70 states including the US). In this connection on 21 of July the Kosovo government took a decision to introduce an embargo on the importation of goods from Serbia. This step was provoked by the fact that Serbia continues to regard the border between the states as an administrative only and does not recognize the Kosovo customs documents. The sending of customs officers supported by the special forces along the border caused a strong discontent among the Serbs in Northern Kosovo and led to a sharp rise of the tension. The crisis turned into violence when a group by almost 200 youths, most of them disguised attacked two of the border points. One Kosovo policeman was killed and four others were wounded. One of the border points was set on fire and TANJUG crew was attacked while a Croatian helicopter of the KFOR units was shot at according to the statement of the Croatia MoD. For suppressing the tension the international forces (mainly from the US contingent) and representatives of the European mission of EULEX took the control over the northern border. The special police forces of Kosovo retreated to the interior of the territory. In retaliation hundreds of ethnic Serbs blocked by trucks, trailers, wooden stumps, tires the two main roads to Serbia. Thus the international forces stationed along the border remained isolated from their bases.

As of 1 July 2011

The situation in the Western Balkans remains relatively calm preserving simultaneously the different dynamics and seriousness of the political processes in the individual states. The common tendency is a demonstrated aspiration for economic stabilization and development in view of the eventual future EC membership, realized in the atmosphere of political confrontation, ethnic and religious nationalism, separatism and organized crime.

With a perfect CIA operation without the knowledge of ISI and the Pakistani government terrorist number one was killed in a small military town close to Islamabad.

This justifies the ten- year long policy of the Afghanistan government concerning the genesis and the geographic direction of the terrorism. The strong pressure exercised by the US and the international community on Pakistan produced an opposite effect as the Pakistani Parliament by a resolution discussing the CIA operation declared the operation an aggression and violation of sovereignty on the part of USA.

The information coming from Egypt shows that the situation continues to be unstable. The steps towards democratization that have been undertaken are slow, uncertain and often are headed in a wrong direction having subsequently a negative effect on the economy.

The right course and the public consensus for getting out of the crisis have not been found yet the analyses and evaluation of the last events (after the 25 January Revolution) in Egypt show. The contradictions between the young generation which became the prime mover in the revolutionary developments and the generation of the elder more conservative population, headed by those closest to the President’s elite are growing deeper.

The spontaneous revolutions in the Arab countries resulted in the deposing of the despotic regimes in some of them, while in others /Jordan, Syria, Libya/ they grow in scale through armed clashes and mass peaceful protests aiming the final removal of the discredited rulers. This wave of discontent can possibly incite certain forces in some of these countries to redraw the borders in the region as they were determined with the participation of the European powers in 1916-1922. These borders were later shifted during the Iraq war /some ethnic enclaves arose/ and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. There HAMAS took control after parliamentary elections. With the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt /March 1979/ the period of expectations of achieving a final lasting peace in the Middle East set in. Since then until the present moment the parties in the conflict /Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Autonomy (PA)/ participate with varying persistency in negotiations recognizing that the eventual successful conclusion of the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue is the key for solving the problems. Currently, however, under the impact of the wind of changes preconditions for revising the foreign policy targets of the negotiating countries arise and the outline of additional difficulties emerges resulting from government changes.