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Ahtisaari said that a group of experts will visit Belgrade shortly and he hopes that they in Belgrade will show a positive attitude to these proposals. During the press conference, Ahtisaari dismissed the charges of the Serbian delegation that during his Aug 8 with them he told them that the Serbs are guilty as a nation.” Particularly, Ahtisaari said that the Belgrade authorities should understand that the Milosevic policy (historical legacy) should be taken into consideration during the determination of Kosovo status and that “each nation in the world has its guilt and must pay for it.” The Serbian side...

2 September 2006 | 15:23 | FOCUS News Agency Belgrade. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Serbian President Boris Tadic will sign Thursday a Status of Forces Agreement /SOFA/ in Washington between the government of the Republic of Serbia and the USA. The Agreement is connected to the protection of the status, the access and the use of the military infrastructure in the Republic of Serbia, RTS reported. It will deepen the cooperation in the sphere of defense between Serbia and the USA based on an absolute respect of the two countries’ sovereignty and the UN regulations. Besides,...

30 August 2006 | 14:52 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. USA military forces started preparing for their pullout of the Eagle base near Tuzla, Serbian agency TANJUG informs citing Bosnian newspaper Oslobojdenje. The news of the pullout of the American troops has caused concern among Sarajevo political circles. Citing reliable sources the Bosnian newspaper announced the Americans will leave the base by the end of the year as they will be replaced by a Dutch battalion. The chair of the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency Sulejman Tihic could not confirm definitely the news of the pullout of the US troops...

Sarajevo, 24 August (AKI) - Bosnian Muslim leader Sulejman Tihic has told local Serbs to stop talking about a possible referendum on independence, because Bosnia was indivisible and those who don’t like it should leave the country. Tihic, who currently chairs Bosnia’s three-man rotating state presidency, has been an outspoken advocate of Muslim demands for the abolition of Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska (RS). Local Serbs for their part have threatened to hold a referendum on independence. The quarrel prompted the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Christian Schwarz Schilling, to intervene last week demanding that politicians on...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aug. 23 — For a month usually devoid of political activity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, August has been unusually fraught, as several incidents have raised ethnic tensions to a level not seen in years. On Aug. 11, a bomb severely damaged the tomb of Alija Izetbegovic, the former Bosnian president. Last week in eastern Bosnia, a group of Muslims forced their way into a Serbian church built on the former site of a mosque. And the broadcast of a videotape showing the wartime killing of an unarmed Bosnian Serb by Muslims prompted calls for a senior...

Forensic experts have excavated over 1,000 bodies from a mass grave in the village of Kamenica in eastern Bosnia.

Serbias Foreighn Ministery oficialy strongly supported UN resolution on sending 15,000 peacekeepers to south Lebannon expressing hope that UN securiti councile will be as much as firm regarding future status of Kosovo and Serbias legal claims as souvereign nation. Serbias foreighn ministery said "Hezbollah millitants are eaqualy danger in their beligrance and unacceptance of existing state of Israel as are Kosovo (Muslim) Albanians in their belligrance and millitantism and unacceptance of souvereign borders of Serbia." This i sthe first time that Serbia is officialy eaqulising its own problems with problems of Israel.

A senior Serbian government official has said she would accept a partition of Kosovo if no other long-term solution can be found. The president of Serbia's Co-ordination Centre for Kosovo, Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, also said no Serb leader would ever sign a deal giving Kosovo independence. She said Belgrade's policy was for Kosovo province to have substantial autonomy within the Serbian state. Kosovo is technically part of Serbia but has been run by the UN since 1999. The vast majority of Kosovo's population are ethnic Albanian who have been pressing for independence. Kosovo's Prime Minister Agim Ceku has ruled out...

WASHINGTON DC -- 25 U.S. Senators are asking that the U.S. president supports the democratically elected Serbian government. The letter argues that Serbia’s role is of vital importance for the future of South-Eastern Europe and America’s regional interests and that Belgrade has grown into a strong U.S. regional partner. “In order to help transform Serbia, the U.S. should support the reforms in the military and the security sectors, encourage cooperation with the Serbian Army and enabling its officers to attend military colleges and courses in the U.S.”, the letter said. The Senators remind that it is Serbia’s strategic goal to...

Footage shown on Serbia RTS central TV shoved amateur footage of muslim Bosnian general Atif Dudakovic openlz ordering his soldiers via hand-radio to burn Christian Serb villages. tape sows Dudakovic telling "Burn this village, burn this haste, burn it all" ant than it ontinues "The boys are already down there, Iw ordered village to be burned" tape continues with male voice telling Dudakovic "This i sSerbian, this is all on fire" This was un continuation of Croate-Muslim offensive "Oluja" (Storm) that ethicaly cleansed 250,000 Christian Serbs in september 1995. During Dudakovic action over 870 Christian Serb civilliand and 400 soldiers...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hizbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far. PHOTOS The week's events from around the world, captured in pictures. » VIEW THIS WEEK'S PHOTOS Diplomatic Dispatches Nora Boustany 's column reporting on Washington's diplomatic community appears each Wednesday and Friday in The Post....

BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 4, 2006 Friday Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based Radio B92 on 4 August Belgrade, Zagreb, Banja Luka, 4 August: The 11th anniversary of Croatia's military Operation Storm was marked with a commemoration in St Mark's Church and a gathering in Nikola Pasic Square [in central Belgrade] today. Following the commemoration, a protest walk from St Mark's Church to Nikola Pasic Square was organized by the Association of Families of Missing Persons from Krajina [part of Croatia formerly with Serb majority]. A resolution was read out in Nikola Pasic Square to several hundred Serbs from...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - The major powers voiced concern on Friday at tensions in northern Kosovo, where there are growing signs of Serb resistance as the majority Albanian province pushes for independence from Serbia. It did not specify which developments. Reports suggest Serbs there are strengthening what they say are self-defense groups made up of former military and police officers. "Both Belgrade and Pristina should take immediate steps to reduce tensions in northern Kosovo, particularly to encourage responsible leadership and build confidence among communities," said the statement, issued by the U.S. liaison office in Kosovo on behalf of the United States,...

On Serbia and Madeleine Albright. 7/29/2006, Volume 011, Issue 44 SPARRING OVER SERBIA STEPHEN SCHWARTZ's "Free at Last" (July 24) left me greatly surprised and somewhat disappointed, both by the distortion of historical and political facts and by the argumentation based on malicious and trivial political comments. Describing Serbia as a "mafia state" is intentionally overlooking the well-known fact that the Milosevic regime met its end when the Serbian people, investing enormous effort and encountering the greatest possible risk, overthrew it in their bloodless revolution of October 2000. Serbian democratic authorities, in their crackdown on organized crime, and with the...

Tomislav Nikolic said that the armed defense must be the last resort, should the future Kosovo status talks produce independence for the province. ;We have already had a chance to defend Kosovo against much stronger enemies”, Nikolić said in an interview with the Serbian state television (RTS), stressing that armed defense is the last option and that diplomacy must be given every chance. Nikolić said that the Radicals will take it to the streets and lead the citizens against the Serbian prime minister and president, Boris Tadić and Vojislav Koštunica, should they fail to start with preparations to return Kosovo...

Writing for an outfit called FamilySecurityMatters.org last week, Weekly Standard contributor and longtime champion of Balkan Muslims Stephen Schwartz describes an overnight bus ride from Kosovo's capital Pristina to a resort town in Montenegro: "A man behind me began speaking almost immediately and without stopping, in Albanian — which I understand…insistently focused on the nature of G-d (a favorite subject for Islamic fundamentalists), [and on] the nefarious influence of Sufis who thought they could reinterpret the faith, the evil intentions of Americans, Iraq, and bloodshed. I was startled because it is rare to hear Albanians, after the rescue of Kosovo,...

A prominent Serbian Orthodox bishop Thursday said the U.S. was allowing Islamic extremists to wage war on Christians in Kosovo by deciding not to oppose Kosovo's independence. Kosovo is an autonomous province in Serbia with a population of about 2 million, most who are ethnic Albanian and Muslim. It is currently administered by the United Nations Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), but negotiations which began this year are expected to eventually result in independence for the province. However, Dr. Artemije Radosavljevic on Thursday issued a warning about the prospect of and independent Kosovo. "At a time when America is...

Three men have gone on trial in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, charged with plotting terrorist attacks. Mirsad Bektasevic, Cesur Abdulkadir and Bajro Ikanovic were arrested in 2005. Prosecutors say they planned an attack in Bosnia or another European nation to force the government involved to pull out troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Police say they found a large cache of explosives and firearms in raids on the suspects' apartments. The suspects are pleading not guilty to the charges. The three men were arrested in October and December last year near Sarajevo, along with two other men who were later released...

PRIZREN, Kosovo -- Being a monk is never easy. But Brother Benedict, a friendly 29-year-old with the ever-present beard that characterizes Orthodox Christian clerics, cheerfully welcomed three foreign visitors to his humble abode. Unfortunately, any Serb who travels outside of few remaining enclaves does so at his own risk. At the quasi-border dividing Serbia from Kosovo (which nominally remains part of Serbia), drivers routinely replace their Serbian license plates with ones marked Kosovo to disguise their identities. To do otherwise would risk not only their cars but their lives. Even foreigners are at risk. Some British tourists recently were roughed...

It is always very hard to focus on broad pictures when so many fires are in need of being put out. But it is imperative to keep in mind in the ongoing conflict Iran’s long-standing ties not only to Hezbollah, but to Islamists in Bosnia, a relationship that spans more than a decade. There is concern among Bosnian contacts that, if Iran feels things are going badly in Lebanon and that the war needs another front, it would take little to ignite Bosnia. It would not be hard to do and the international presence in Bosnia is greatly reduced. So...