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SARAJEVO, April 7 (Reuters) - The police director of Bosnia's semi-autonomous Serb Republic resigned on Friday under pressure from U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte who is unhappy with his work, the republic's prime minister said. Prime Minister Milorad Dodik told a news conference in Banja Luka that the resignation of Dragomir Andan followed del Ponte's complaints that he was not doing enough to hunt down war crimes fugitives. "The main reason is that Republika Srpska has the obligation to cooperate with the Hague tribunal," Dodik said, confirming media speculation that Andan had been under pressure to resign. The Sarajevo-based...

7.4.2006 14:54 MERDARE, (Tanjug) - UNMIK representatives handed over on Friday at the administrative boundary crossing Merdare the remains of 11 Serbs kidnapped in 1998 and 1999 in Kosovo and Metohija.

04 April 2006, 14:41 Serbs should have access to Kosovo places of worship - Alexy II Moscow, April 4, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and all Russia said that the Serbian exodus from Kosovo is a tragedy and highlights the fact that Serbs should have access to their shrines in Kosovo. "Why is no attention paid to the destruction of Orthodox churches in the heart of Europe?" the patriarch said at a briefing in Moscow on Tuesday. "The fact that Serbs have to leave Kosovo is a tragedy for the people, because one should understand that the land...

Apr 3 2006 2:17PM Moscow confirms Serbian media published actual Milosevic letter MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) - A copy of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's letter to the Russian Foreign Ministry, published by the Serbian media in March, is identical to the original, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin told Interfax on Monday. The Belgrade newspaper Politika published Milosevic's hand-written letter to the Russian Foreign Ministry for the first time on March 17. "That Serbian newspaper published a copy of Milosevic's letter identical to the Russian Foreign Ministry's copy. We understand the letter reached the Serbian media from Milosevic's lawyers,...

"No one now disputes that stopping Slobodan Milosevic was the right thing to do,” wrote the Wall Street Journal this week, several days after the deposed Serbian strongman expired in his cell in The Hague. It’s an appealing sentiment, suggesting as it does that the man who presided over the deaths of 250,000 people in Yugoslavia in the 1990s died unsung and unmourned. In reality, however, even Slobodan Milosevic had his defenders. What is more, they are the same voices--largely on the far Left but also on the isolationist Right--who have now taken up the cause of Saddam Hussein. Many...

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP)-His arriving coffin was left in the rain while airport officials signed paperwork. Its muted public display has drawn a fraction of the huge crowds he commanded in his heyday.Slobodan Milosevic's memory and legacy are being unceremoniously snubbed by countrymen who blame the late Serbian leader for ruining the republic.

MOSCOW. March 20 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Alexander Lukashenko on his reelection as president of Belarus, the Russian president's press service said on Monday. "The outcome of the elections demonstrates voters' trust in your policies aimed at further raising the well-being of the Belarussian people," Putin said in his letter to Lukashenko. Russia and Belarus have strong bonds of friendship, the Russian president said. "We are vigorously working to develop multidimensional integration cooperation and broaden relations in all areas. I am convinced that thanks to our joint efforts, we will be able to make headway in...

LONDON: Germans are the most intelligent people in Europe, well ahead of the British (in eighth place) and the French (15th), according to a new study by Northern Ireland’s University of Ulster, The Times reported Monday. With an average intelligence quotient (IQ) of 107, a scintilla of brainpower above the Dutch who also scored 107, the Polish (106), the Swedish (104) and the Italians (102). They all came out better in the intelligence stakes than the British who rated an even 100 IQ according to the study, ahead of the Spanish (98) and the French (94) who could only comfort...

Update 14: Report: Drug Traces Found in Milosevic AP 03.12.2006, 01:46 PM Traces of a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis were found in a blood sample taken in recent months from former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a Dutch news report said, citing an unidentified "adviser" to the U.N. war crimes tribunal. The report came hours after Milosevic's legal adviser showed journalists a letter the late Serb leader wrote Friday, one day before his body was discovered in prison, alleging that he was being poisoned. The report was on the text service of the Dutch state broadcaster, NOS. It...

MUSLIMS in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican. The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the dictator Enver Hoxha, and "mixed" marriages are the norm. Seventy per cent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic. But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims". "We do not want this statue to be...

[...] The constitution provides for freedom of religion; however, the authorities restrict this right in practice. Although Article 16 of the 1996 amended constitution that resulted from the illegal referendum reaffirms the equality of religions and denominations before the law, it also contains restrictive language that stipulated that cooperation between the state and religious organizations "is regulated with regard for their influence on the formation of spiritual, cultural, and country traditions of the Belarusian people." [...] In March 2004 the government began forcing state employees (some 80% of Belarusian workers) to sign short-term work contracts. Although contracts may be concluded...

The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy were misled into attacking the sovereign, emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia, over rumors of genocide and ethnic cleansing that proved false. In so doing, we delivered the Balkans to al Qaeda. Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, the repercussions of which are still escalating seven years later. The people we "rescued" have turned their weapons against United Nations and NATO forces. While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in...

Milosevic feared he was being poisoned: lawyer March, 11 2005 BELGRADE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic feared he was being poisoned in his detention cell in The Hague, his lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic said on Saturday hours after the tribunal announced Milosevic's death. "Today, I have filed an official request to the tribunal to have the autopsy carried out in Moscow, having in mind his claims yesterday that he was being poisoned in the jail," Tomanovic told reporters in The Hague. Acting on a request from Milosevic, Tomanovic said he had made a request for protection for his client...

Text of report by Udo Ulfkotte entitled "Security circles: Indications of a third London terror cell", published by German news agency ddp on 12 September September 12, 2005 --Frankfurt am Main: There are indications that the Al-Qa'idah terror organization has an intact network operating in the Balkans. Sources within the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) intimate that both the Madrid terrorists, and some of those who perpetrated the London bombings, had "contacts with Bosnia". These sources told ddp news agency that European intelligence services had "vague indications that another terror cell controlled from Bosnia is preparing a new attack on London"....

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Lawyers representing Slobodan Milosevic have asked the U.N. war crimes tribunal to issue a subpoena to force former U.S. President Bill Clinton to testify at his trial, documents showed on Tuesday. "In his position as former president of the United States, Mr Clinton had a continuous role and unique knowledge of events relevant to the indictment," the lawyers said in a written request filed last week but only made public on Tuesday. Lawyers Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins said his evidence was needed to make sure the trial was "informed and fair". They said Milosevic had...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Nationalists in a Serbian town are calling on local authorities to send back a donated Dutch bus because it comes from the country hosting the U.N. war crimes tribunal, which is prosecuting prominent Serb suspects. Local members of the opposition Radical Party, whose leader Vojislav Seselj is in detention awaiting trial at the tribunal, say the tulip-painted bus given to the town of Pirot in southeastern Serbia is an insult. "They should not even think of putting that trash on the streets," said local Radical leader Boban Vojinovic. "Serbian Radicals want no charity from those who are...

Dragas says SAS captured Ratko Mladic in Romania Banja Luka, 09:16 General Ratko Mladic was arrested in Romania by British SAS commandos on Tuesday during a joint British-Romanian security force exercise, Director of Serbia & Montenegro International Institute for Security Orhan Dragas told Republika Srpska Television. Dragas claims The Hague Tribunal will deny information on Mladic’s arrest as long as it sees him in Scheweningen prison. Dragas added that Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is wise enough to ensure that Mladic be arrested by foreign troops rather than by Serbian police. “Ratko Mladic did not want to turn himself in...

Gen. Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb commander accused of orchestrating Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, has been located in Serbia and authorities are negotiating his surrender, security officials said Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT Mladic, considered the most ruthless commander of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, "has not yet been arrested," one official who is close to the operation to find Mladic told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not entitled to speak to the media. Another security official, also demanding anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information and fears...

The Srebrenica operation was planned so that Bosnian Serb forces were positioned in a shape of a horseshoe, thus intentionally leaving space for the Muslim army and civilians to retreat North, North-West towards Tuzla. The distance of 36km and the configuration of the terrain are such that any man in average physical condition can cross it on foot. The military operation was conducted in this manner with the intention of minimizing the number of casualties, since the Muslims had brought in substantial military forces. If the Muslim forces had been hermetically enclosed, a violent fight would have ensued in which...

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