Free Republic

Excerpt - BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's ultranationalist Radical Party claimed victory in national elections on Sunday, in a voter rejection of Western appeals for closer cooperation on the arrest of war criminals and on Kosovo. A projection of the result showed the opposition Radicals, strongest party in Serbia for years, taking 28 percent of the vote, a point higher than the 2003 national elections. "The Radical Party has won these elections," said Tomislav Nikolic, the Radical's candidate for prime minister in the absence of party leader Vojislav Seselj, who is on trial for war crimes at the U.N. tribunal in...

Text of report by "E.B." entitled "Serbian drug barons are big players in Europe" published by Serbian newspaper Blic on 27 March Belgrade: Serbian drug barons, who maintain strong ties with cocaine traders in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of this narcotic, have strong business contacts also with the Albanian mafia, police information indicates. These good contacts on both sides of the Atlantic and highly functional trafficking routes, whereby tons of cocaine are smuggled from South America to Europe, have enabled them to take a place among the most powerful drugs traffickers in Europe. People have only recently become aware...

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 Albania seizes missiles bound for Macedonia TIRANA, Dec 14 (Reuters) Albanian police have seized three shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles and arrested four people accused of smuggling the weapons from Montenegro and attempting to send them to Macedonia, police said today. The Yugoslav-made Strela 2M shoulder-fired missiles, akin to U S Stinger missiles, came from the stock of the Yugoslav army and had been bought for 100,000 euros in Bosnia. Montenegrin and Albanian police had watched the group for months before arresting them near Tirana, a police statement said. Police sources were quoted as saying the missiles were...