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BELGRADE, March 24, 2004 (RIA Novosti correspondent). Serbia is expressing gratitude to the Russian people and the Russian authorities for their support for the Serb population of Kosovo, which has suffered "the bloodiest ethnic cleansing," Chairman of the Serbian Co-ordination Committee for Kosovo Nebojsa Covic said at Belgrade aerodrome where two Russian aircraft arrived today with humanitarian aid. Mr. Covic told reporters that a plan of the Russian aid distribution among Serbs all across Kosovo had been worked out. Labour and Employment Minister Slobodan Lalovic stressed that Russia had become the first country to deliver humanitarian aid to Serbs. According...

13 Mar 2003 12:33 Ex-Milosevic ally, liked by West, now acting Serb PM BELGRADE, March 13 (Reuters) - Nebojsa Covic, thrust into the role of acting Serbian prime minister after the killing of Zoran Djindjic, was once an ally of ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and later joined reformers who ousted him. As deputy prime minister in Djindjic's reformist government, the 44-year-old former Belgrade mayor won praise from Western governments for the way he helped end a local Albanian guerrilla insurgency which gripped southern Serbia east of U.N.-run Kosovo in 2001.Instead of deploying the heavy-handed tactics Milosevic used in a failed...