Serbia

Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini says the time has come for Serbia to submit its application for European Union membership. Frattini said that Serbia should submit its candidacy appplication with the EU “before Christmas.”

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic announced that negotiations with Russia over some USD 200 million credit needed for the budget deficit have been finalized.

The District Court in Priština released three Serbs from the municipality of Novo Brdo from custody on Wednesday. Slobodan and Srećko Martinović and Svetlana Stojanović were arrested on September 24 and accused of committing war crimes. The charges against them state that the three “from April 17 until April 22, …

Russian Ambassador to Belgrade Aleksandr Konuzin was in Kosovo on Wednesday, in the northern, Serb-dominated part of the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica. Beta news agency reports that he stated that the Russian Federation and Serbia had good political and economic cooperation, but that it was necessary to expand it …

Minister for Kosovo Goran Bogdanović was on Wednesday touring several villages in the province’s Kosovsko Pomoravlje district. As he met with the local Serbs, he said that those of them who participated in the recently held Kosovo Albanian government-organized local elections, which Belgrade rejected, “did not lose faith in Belgrade …

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić says Serbia is doing all in its power to arrest the remaining fugitives from the Hague Tribunal, Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić. However, speaking in Belgrade on Wednesday, he added that the time of their arrest was “a very relative category”.

Since the War Crimes Department in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina was set up in 2005, 58 war crimes sentences have been passed. 41 Serbs, 11 Croats, 5 Bosniaks and 1 mujahidin of Middle East descent have been sentenced for war crimes. Ten sentences concern crimes against Serbs, six …

Montenegrin President Filip Vujanović stated that his country would respect the decision made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Hague-based UN court is expected to next year give its opinion on the legality of the Kosovo Albanian unilateral declaration of independence. Montenegro is one of the countries that …

Serbian Minister for Kosovo Goran Bogdanović met in Belgrade yesterday with OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut. The two discussed the current situation and the status of human rights in Serbia’s southern province, the Serbian Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija stated late on Tuesday.

In the first case of secession brought before the ICJ, 12 of 29 countries side with Serbia, saying that Kosovo’s independence violates international law; but regardless of the final outcome, Kosovo will not return to the Serbian fold, and the entire process is likely to only exacerbate ethnic animosity, Igor …