Wednesday’s meeting between the Croatian and Serbian prime ministers raised hopes that counter-claims of genocide will be abandoned, a European Parliament rapporteur said.Zagreb and Belgrade should not ignore problems caused by their conflicts in the 1990s but try to solve them through dialogue, said the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Serbia, …
Read More »Serbia President Slaps Down Kosovo’s UN Bid
Tomslav Nikolic says Serbia has no intention of allowing Kosovo to obtain a seat at the United Nations.Speaking on Wednesday, President Nikolic said that Serbia would not allow Kosovo to join UN and the issue would stay off the table at upcoming EU-led Belgrade-Pristina talks. “If it was acceptable, I …
Read More »Swarovski to Build Factory in Serbia
The Austrian company is to start construction of a factory in the town of Subotica in northern Serbia in June.The construction of the new Swarovski factory will start in June and should be complete by late 2014, Mladjan Dinkic, Serbia’s finance minister, said on January 16, after meeting Swarovski managers …
Read More »Serbia, Albanians in Showdown over Guerrilla Monument
Belgrade warned it could deploy police to help remove the memorial to ethnic Albanian fighters in south Serbia but local authorities vowed to legally resist.Serbia’s justice ministry said on Wednesday that the deadline to take down the controversial monument in the town of Presevo had already passed at midnight the …
Read More »Kosovo Arrests Serbian Grave Desecration Suspect
Police have detained a man suspected of destroying Serbian Orthodox graves in Kosovo Polje but insisted that he wasn’t motivated by ethnic hatred.A police statement said that a 48-year-old man, named as M. Buzuku, an ethnic Ashkali, was arrested on Tuesday afternoon for allegedly vandalising more than 50 gravestones. Police …
Read More »Kosovo-Serbia Border Talks in Stalemate
EU-led talks between Belgrade and Pristina ended on Tuesday without much progress on a recent border management deal.Talks on implementing the “Integrated Border Management Agreement” and preparing for the next round of the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia on January 17 ended inconclusively on Tuesday. Following a meeting of the …
Read More »Serbia Tops Germany’s Asylum Seekers List
The highest number of people who sought asylum in Germany in 2012 came from Serbia, recent German foreign ministry data show.Data from the German Foreign Ministry show that 8,477 of the 64,539 people who requested asylum in Germany in 2012 came from Serbia, ranking the country first in the list …
Read More »Serbian Far-Right Group Risks Court Ban
The Constitutional Court may look again at banning SNP Nasi after its members torched a provincial flag and put up posters calling NGOs and media foreign agents.Vladimir Cvijan, head of parliament’s committee on constitutional affairs and a member of the presidency of the ruling Progressive Party, said the Constitutional Court …
Read More »Serbia Gives Landmark Payout to Bosnian Detainee
For the first time, Belgrade will pay compensation to a Bosniak who was held in a Serbian prison camp after fleeing from the fall of Srebrenica in 1995.In the landmark decision, a Belgrade court has awarded around 5,000 euros to Mujo Vatres, a Bosniak from the town of Zepa near …
Read More »Russia Agrees Loan for Serbian Railways
Ministers from Belgrade and Moscow have signed a deal on a 600 million euro Russian export loan to finance rail infrastructure in Serbia.The Serbian and Russian finance ministers, Mladjan Dinkic and Anton Siluanov, have signed a deal in Moscow on a government loan for Serbia’s state-owned railway company. The contract, …
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