SERBIA: Serbia's parliament confirms government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica/ Army police units storm army boarding house in central Belgrade in search of General Ratko Mladic

As Serbia's parliament confirmed the government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, army police units stormed an army boarding house in central Belgrade searching for General Ratko Mladic. Serbia's parliament approved the moderate government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Tuesday (May 15) to the relief of the West, which feared the Balkan country's fragile democracy would relapse into nationalism. The vote came only just before a midnight deadline and despite an ultranationalist protest. Kostunica told parliament his coalition would seek to take Serbia into the European Union and cooperate with The Hague war crimes tribunal. But he vowed Serbia would make no concessions on the breakaway province of Kosovo, which a U.N.-supervised process has set on course for independence, for the sake of EU ties. In a dramatic parliament session, hardline deputies protested over a late-night police search for war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, who they see as a hero, and dragged the debate out to 30 minutes before the constitutional deadline. "We were acting on a tip that Mladic was hiding in the area. We searched the army boarding house and some buildings in the neighborhood. These are the same kind of activities that we had before in our search for the war crime fugitives; this was the search for Ratko Mladic," said Rasim Ljajic, head of the Office for Coordination with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn was due in Belgrade on Wednesday to meet Serbian leaders and assess whether Belgrade is serious about arresting top war crimes suspects like Mladic. Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, agreed a coalition with pro-Western president Boris Tadic last Friday. The government got 133 votes in the 250-seat house. Kostunica told parliament the coalition had agreed on the "five pillars" of its policy, notably on Kosovo, EU membership, cooperation with the Hague tribunal, social and economic reforms and fighting crime and corruption. The EU had been urging the formation of a moderate coalition since Serbia's inconclusive Jan. 21 election, but toughened its stance last week when ultranationalist Tomislav Nikolic was elected parliament speaker. Brussels was shocked and put pressure on Kostunica and Tadic to agree a coalition, and replace Nikolic. The result was a delicate balance: Kostunica is prime minister but Tadic's Democratic Party gets 13 of 25 cabinet posts. Last year the EU froze talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), the first step towards membership, over Mladic, who it says is being aided by hardliners in the Serbian army and police. Rehn said on Monday the EU was "rather confident" the programme of the new government would warrant an immediate resumption of SAA talks, but noted Belgrade would have to send Mladic to The Hague before the SAA could be signed. Officials said the army searched several buildings late on Tuesday as part of its "continuous" search for Mladic, but had not found him. The Radicals protested parliament had a right to know, and at some point threatened to walk out unless briefed. Apart from reviving the EU talks, Kostunica will try to fight the imminent independence of Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO ousted Serb forces who had killed 10,000 civilians in a two-year war with separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

ITN Source | May 16, 2007

Tags:. .midnight. .democracy. .civilians. .corruption. .constitutional