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BELGRADE -- Serbian police (MUP) says its officers came under attack in southern Serbia late last evening. The incident occurred at 10 p.m. Saturday, on the road between Lučani and Končulj, when masked assailants, wearing black uniforms, first committed a number of robberies by shooting the passing cars’ tires and then robbing the drivers. A patrol from the Bujanovac station arrived at the scene shortly after it was alerted, when gunmen opened fire at officers. MUP’s elite Gendarmerie, stationed at the nearby administrative boundary with Kosovo, also came under fire when they arrived. Interior Minister Dragan Jočić told reporters this...

If it turns out that [former Finnish President and UN Envoy on Kosovo] Ahtisaari was bribed to suggest Kosovo's independence in his plan, it would cast a serious shadow over his proposal, said Serbia's Parliament Speaker Oliver Dulich. "This, of course, should be looked into," he said. According to Fokus, a Bosnian Serb newspaper, the German federal security service, or BND, confirmed these suspicions in their report to the UN GenSec Ban Ki Moon. According to the report, Martti Ahtisaari was paid 40 million euros by the Albanian leadership in the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohia.

Canada should oppose unilateral attempts by the United Nations to grant independence to the region of Kosovo as long as Serbia is left out of the equation. This is not because ethnic Albanians who form the majority of the region don't deserve a say in their future, but because aiding an independence movement was never anything envisioned by Canada when they sent military assistance to the region in the 1990s, out of humanitarian concerns for Kosovars who were being "bullied" by the Serbian government. While victims of Serbian repression certainly existed, many sources say casualty counts were inflated and that...

March 20, 2007 -- In a memorandum to the Secretary of State, President Bush has authorized arming of Serbia and its once partner, Montenegro. According to the White House Press Release, President Bush has authorized "furnishing defense articles and defense services" to both, Montenegro and Serbia. "Pursuant to the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 503(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, and section 3(a)(1) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended, I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to the...

Serbia looks set for weeks of debilitating coalition-building after the results of parliamentary elections on 21 January. Although Tomislav Nikolić’s ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party won the most votes, under the proportional representation system no party won an outright victory. Many Western diplomats and politicians have tried to depict the election as a decisive confrontation between the dark forces of Balkan primitivism and ‘pro-European’ enlightenment. The reality in Serbia itself was more prosaic, with much of the election being fought around economic questions and technocratic promises of fighting corruption.

Kosovo is lived in by others besides dominant Albanians and minority SerbsHAMDIJE SEAPI, a local Gorani official, excuses himself to go to the funeral of a woman from a neighbouring village. He did not really know her, but since her village was all but abandoned in 1999, somebody has to. In his village, Mlike, there were 1,380 people before the Kosovo war, but now there are barely 400, 70% of them over 65. “Before, we were somehow like shock absorbers between Serbs and Albanians, but now we have our backs to the walls.” The Gorani are among the smallest of...

"In Banja Luka you have a very well organised stock market, very good information, transparency, they publish shareholder lists very frequently, they have all financial statements of the companies published on the Web site," said Adam Cleary, the chief executive of a London-based investment fund. Cleary said that his Monte Cristo Capital investment fund does business at the Banja Luka Stock Exchange but found it difficult to penetrate the Sarajevo exchange. "It is very hard to break the power of the oligarchs (in Sarajevo), whereas in Banja Luka things are more open," Cleary told Reuters , referring to the managers...

PRISTINA, Serbia A U.S. peacekeeper serving with the NATO-led mission in Kosovo was beaten by three people who attacked him at a petrol station, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, outspoken and influential televangelists in the US, are joining forces with Serbia's Christian Orthodox church to campaign against independence for the mainly Muslim province of Kosovo, according to the spiritual leader of the Serb minority there. Bishop Artemije, the most senior Orthodox cleric in Kosovo, said the two Christian broadcasters had promised to alert their followers and exert their influence. "They point out that they have friends at the highest level of government and will urge them to help us so that Kosovo remains in the borders of Serbia," he said. Diplomats in Washington say...

1,000 Serbs Serving With U.S. Forces in IraqAbout a thousand people from Serbia are on active duty in Iraq, wearing US uniform and fighting alongside the Americans, writes Belgrade daily "Blitz." Jacqueline (Zhaklina) Chetich's dream came true last Tuesday when, along with 83 other foreigners, she became a U.S. citizen at a ceremony held at a military base near Baghdad. Like Jacqueline, many other Serbs currently serving in Iraq hope to one day become U.S. citizens and earn what they could only dream about in Serbia. Jacqueline joined the U.S. Forces in Germany three years ago. She took part in...

Serbian cops drop a bomb Serbian police have admitted they may have accidentally put an explosive device on a plane to London. It happened after an exercise to test sniffer dogs at Surcin airport in Belgrade went wrong, local daily Blic reported. Officers had put explosives into luggage destined for Heathrow airport, as well as Paris, Milan, and Athens, and let sniffer dogs loose to find them.

Some 14 years after pressing for the United Nations to impose sanctions on Belgrade, the United States has become Serbia and Montenegro's biggest foreign investor. The World Bank says American firms accounted for roughly one-third of the US$3.5 billion of foreign money invested from 2002, when the sanctions were eventually lifted, to the end of 2004. Although one or two million people of Serbian descent live in the US, émigré ties to the homeland have played little role in driving this investment. The US-based Serbian Unity Congress and Serbian American Chamber of Commerce periodically organize conferences and inform investors of...

Is this VW ad coming to our shores any time soon? Doubt it!

BELGRADE, 5 April - The Serbian State Prosecution Office for War Crimes has announced it will charge the Slovene nationals who murdered three Yugoslav National Army's (JNA) conscripts in 1991 with war crimes. The execution of the three soldiers is considered the first war crime in Former Yugoslavia. The murders took place at the Holmec border crossing, and were filmed by the Austrian ORF. Just a few weeks ago the state prosecutor in the Slovene capital Ljubljana brought charges against Mrs. Neka Miklavcic-Predan, the director of the Slovene chapter of the Helsinki Human Rights Group,for publicly referring to the murders...

Negotiations regarding the future status of Kosovo have begun and it is increasingly clear that the overwhelming majority of the world media, not to mention the government of the United States and its allies, favor giving independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo, which since the 1999 war has been administered by the United Nations under NATO military control. In effect, the western world is in favor of detaching Kosovo from (Christian) Serbia by fiat of power and making it into an independent Muslim state. The main argument of those supporting this scenario - notably in the United States, where...

Western Macedonia, Illirida, and Greater Albania By Carl Savich The Greater Albania ideology envisions not only Kosovo and Metohija as integral part of a Greater Ethnic Albania, but also Western Macedonia, or Illirida. The basis for the Greater Albania strategy can be found in the 1878 League of Prizren. The map and borders for the future Greater Albania were determined by the Ottoman Turkish vilayet system. Kosovo and Metohija and Western Macedonia were part of the Kosovo vilayet. The capital of the Kosovo vilayet was Skopje. Kosovo-Metohija is not the end of the Greater Albania ideology, but only the beginning....

Bosnian Serbs Sullen and Defiant Bosnian Serbs talk to the BBC News website's Neil Arun of fear, faith and football, 10 years after their army lifted its siege of the capital, Sarajevo. "You must have two sides to wage war, as you have to make love," says Slavko Jovicic, stubbing out a cigarette as a snowdrift smudges the windows of his office in Pale, on the outskirts of Sarajevo. He is on a mission to show the world a side of the war he believes it ignored - the atrocities committed against the Bosnian Serbs. Slavko says he lost...

Serbia and Montenegro International Security Institute Director Claims Mladic Was Arrested in Romania 22 February 2006 | 19:50 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. General Ratko Mladic was arrested in Romania by British SAS commandoes yesterday during joint British - Romanian security forces drill, Director of Serbia and Montenegro International Institute for Security Orhan Dragas told in interview with RTRS, Bosnia agency FENA informs. Dragas stated Hague Tribunal refuted information on Mladic’s arrest because Mladic has not yet been handed over to The Hague. According to Dragas Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica was wise not to want Ratko Mladic to...

WINDSOR, ON and DETROIT, MI, Feb. 14 /CNW/ - An international ring, which smuggled people from several countries both ways across the Canada - United States border, was rolled up today after an international investigation. Early this morning, fourteen people were arrested in Toronto, Windsor, Detroit and New York City. This is the latest move in a two year long investigation conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the United States Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). As a result of information received during this investigation over 100 migrants...

Judge Patrick Robinson immediately shut down a Western journalist on the Hague Tribunal witness stand last week, when she disclosed having seen Osama bin Laden waltz into the office of late Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. Just as veteran British journalist Eve-Ann Prentice, who covered the Yugoslav conflicts for the Guardian and the Times told of the famous OBL, Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice objected, and the judge “…cut off the testimony immediately declaring it ‘irrelevant,’” according to the defense’s recap of a devastating day of testimony. full article