Serbia

An IMF delegation and the Serbian government have reached an agreement on Serbia’s state budget for next year. Broadcaster RTS reports that there will be no increase in VAT and that the projected budget deficit will be 4 per cent, half a per cent lower than for this year.

The chair of Serbia’s council for cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, Rasim Ljajic, does not know whether Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz will say that Serbia is fully cooperating with the court. Brammertz will visit Serbia next Wednesday to discuss Serbia’s cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former …

FM Vuk Jeremić says he believes that the chief Hague prosecutor will confirm Serbia’s full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal in his report to the UN SC. He said that Serbian officials will have “detailed meetings” with Serge Brammertz, who is due here on Nov. 4 for a working visit, …

President Boris Tadić says Belgrade will continue to insist on a resumption of talks on Kosovo and finding a compromise solution. This, the president told state broadcaster RTS late on Wednesday, regardless of the stand of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stand on the issue of the legality of …

The Hague Tribunal prosecution requested a partial retrial of Ramush Haradinaj. The prosecution claims that the initial trial, which resulted in the ethnic Albanian’s acquittal on charges of crimes in Kosovo in 1998, was not just.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and new US War Crimes Ambassador Stephen Rapp are convinced that Serbia is cooperating fully with the Hague Tribunal. US diplomats will look to promote this impression, in order to press the Dutch to allow the unblocking of Serbia’s Interim Trade Agreement with the …

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen reiterated that Holland is adamant in its stance of not allowing Serbia to continue its European integration.

European parliament member Doris Pack said that Serbia will not enter the European Union “until it solves its problems with Kosovo”. According to Deutsche Welle, she said at a round table discussion in Berlin that Serbia’s “biggest problem is the fact that Kosovo is its closest neighbor which it does …

Radovan Karadzic’s successor as Bosnian Serb president left Swedish prison on Tuesday and arrived in Belgrade after winning early release from her sentence for committing war crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague convicted Biljana Plavsic in February 2003 but last month granted an early …

Official negotiations between Serbia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) began today in Belgrade. The talks concern the EUR 2.9bn loan and the country’s budget for 2010. These are the first meetings concerning the second and third revision of the loan arrangement, and see participation from IMF delegation members and …