Turnberry - Rounds 2 and 3

Apologies for lack of updates from the Ayrshire Coast but it has been a busy couple of days since my last report. The meetings finished today with the WCF Annual General Assembly which tends to be these days a run through of a set list of agenda items in the form of reports from various Board Members, the main meat of the discussion having taken place at the Open Meetings earlier in the week.

The second last item is the approval of new member nations, and you may remember that the application from Kosovo was deferred to this meeting from the one in Basel in April so that member associations could sound out their members and satisfy themselves of the situation behind Serbia's protest that, because Kosovo is not a country recognised by the United Nations, then it could not become a member of the WCF. The Serbia-Kosovo conflict is one of the many wars that have taken place in the Balkans in recent years and Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008 and declared itself an independent nation. Kosovo is recognised by all the countries in Europe except Serbia and, bizarrely, Spain.

After a presentation by the representative of the Kosovan Curling Federation, the floor was thrown open to comments and for 30 minutes, Marko Stojanovic of the Serbian Curling Federation presented the case why, in Serbia's opinion, Kosovo should not be recognised by being given membership of the WCF. As there were no more questions, the resolution would normally have gone to a show of hands vote, but, at the request of the RCCC, seconded by Holland and supported by Japan and other countries, a secret ballot was called. The WCF had obviously expected this as the secret ballot papers were ready for distribution and once they were all counted, Kosovo was admitted by a count of 80-16 with one abstention.

The secret ballot had been called for because, apparently, at least one delegate had received vicious emails after the Basel decision to delay the decision making process.

It remains to be seen what Serbia's reaction will be to this decision.

In other news, Flims in Switzerland was announced as the host for the 2014 World Junior Championships, the third time it will have held this competition since 2003.

As the rain teems down outside Ailsa Craig is invisible from my window at the moment and the last few bedraggled delegates stream in quite literally from the golf course. The Congress has been a great success and will be a regular event in the WCF calendar - the 2013 version will take place at the end of August at a venue still to be announced, though the decision is near.

There were many other things discussed during the week and I will try to find the time to tell you all about them in future blogs. In the meantime I go off to Dumfries tomorrow to play in the ECA's Duncan Stewart Trophy this weekend.