Serbia

Serbian President Boris Tadic travels to Stockholm on Tuesday to officially submit Serbia’s application for EU candidacy. The decision came after Tadic and the country’s Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic signed a request on Saturday night, in the name of the government, for EU candidacy.

Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić said Thursday that Serbia has “never moved faster towards the EU than in 2009”. Speaking during a humanitarian New Year’s reception organized by the Foreign Ministry, he reiterated that EU membership was one of the Serbian government’s priorities.

In the first minutes of December 19 2009, 50 citizens of Serbia will be the first to travel to the European Union without visas in their passports in a flight from Belgrade to Brussels. This group of Serbian citizens, who were selected through the “Europe for everyone” open competition and …

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 …