Serbia

BELGRADE The Serb National Council of Kosovo (SNV) official Radmila Trajković has commented on the government’s stance regarding the announced local elections in Kosovo. She said that “local self-government will have no responsibility toward Serbs” if Belgrade called for a boycott of the vote, scheduled for November. “I do not …

BELGRADE Coordinator of the Forum for Ethnic Relations, Dušan Janjić, said that visa liberalization is not possible for residents of Kosovo currently. He added that the reasons for this is that Serbia “has no control over the province”. Commenting on Interior Minister Ivica Dačić’s statement that the government should adopt …

Detainees from Guantanamo Bay might be relocated to Zabela prison in Pozarevac, Serbia, an anonymous source close to the Serbian government told daily Danas on Tuesday. According to the source, Serbia’s embassy in Washington has passed the prisoner transfer proposal to the US government in order to strengthen bilateral relations. …

VIENNA A former EU envoy in the talks on the Kosovo status says he does not expect Belgrade to recognize “even in the best case scenario”. Stefan Lehne believes that Belgrade and Priština should establish practical cooperation, and that “different political stands on the independence of Kosovo should be put …

WASHINGTON, BELGRADE U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that his country is against “any kind of partition of Kosovo”. “I can tell you that our policy remains unchanged,” Toner said, according to Albanian language media in Priština. He said that he is not familiar with the idea of Republican …

NOVI SAD Opposition Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) President Čedomir Jovanović believes that Serbia has “the slowest and least organized government in Europe”. According to him, it’s a government with too many members who are afraid of taking risks and too few of those who have any ambitions.

Belgrade should make decisions on the issuance of passports to Kosovo residents, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic says. “We have received with sorrow the news that visa liberalisation will not include Kosovo and Metohija residents, but the EC [European Commission] considers that the conditions for people in Kosovo to travel …

The Serbian government will choose the best possible moment for submitting its EU membership request, which will occur by year’s end, a top Serbian official told daily Blic. The director of the EU Integration Office in Serbia, Milica Delevic, told the daily on Sunday: “This shows the desire to speed …

The idea of an exchange of territories between Kosovo and Serbia, circulating in the media, is wrong-headed, former envoy Albert Rohan believes. Rohan, who served as the deputy special envoy for talks on Kosovo’s status, was unequivocal in his rejection of territorial exchanges in an interview with Kosovo’s Daily Express …

THE HAGUE, Netherlands Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic says he was kidnapped by Serb authorities and held without any communication for several days after he was detained in July 2008, according to a document released Wednesday (August 5th) by the UN war crimes tribunal. Karadzic, 64, insists on receiving …