BELGRADE (Reuters) – A Council of Europe draft report alleging Kosovo’s prime minister is a Mafia-style boss lays out a truth diplomats privately acknowledge: the West in Kosovo has favoured stability over justice.

The crime and corruption given succour by such an approach over the past decade has deterred foreign investment and left Kosovo among the most destitute regions in Europe.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – A Council of Europe draft report alleging Kosovo’s prime minister is a Mafia-style boss lays out a truth diplomats privately acknowledge: the West in Kosovo has favoured stability over justice.

The crime and corruption given succour by such an approach over the past decade has deterred foreign investment and left Kosovo among the most destitute regions in Europe.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci headed a mafia-style organised crime ring in the late 1990s that engaged in assassinations, beatings, organ trafficking and other crimes, according to a draft report released Tuesday.

In Pristina, the Kosovo government denounced the draft Council of Europe report as baseless and defamatory, and threatened to take legal and political action in response.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci headed a mafia-style organized crime ring in the late 1990s that engaged in assassinations, beatings, organ trafficking and other crimes, according to a draft report released on Tuesday.

In Pristina, the Kosovo government denounced the draft Council of Europe report as baseless and defamatory, and threatened to take legal and political action in response.

PODGORICA, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Erste Bank, the third-largest
lender in emerging Europe, expects its Montenegrin unit to at
least triple its profit this year thanks to cost cuts and new
products, the bank’s local CEO said on Thursday.

Aleksa Lukic said he expected the bank’s profit in the
European Union applicant country to range from 2 million to 2.2
million euros this year, up from $654,000 in 2009.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia is still not cooperating fully with the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the hunt for fugitive former General Ratko Mladic, the chief prosecutor said on Monday, a key condition for eventual EU membership.

Serbia’s past inability or unwillingness to find Mladic has long delayed its progress toward the European Union, deterring foreign investment and diminishing EU accession funds.

SVILAJNAC, Serbia (Reuters) – Foreign investors are showing renewed interest in agriculture in the emerging Balkans, where land and labour are relatively cheap and crops plentiful, although strewn with many potential pitfalls.

To date, foreign firms have invested in dairies, meat processing, crops and others areas in Serbia and other non-European Union members of the Balkans, and more are considering investments as the world economic crisis eases.

By Adam Tanner

BELGRADE (Reuters Life!) – Showing visitors the extensive gardens at his 333-acre estate, Alexander Karadjordjevic gestures to a bed of flowers and comments on the burden of maintaining such large grounds.

“We’ve had to reduce the gardeners to six. These guys are really stretched out,” said Karadjordjevic, son of Yugoslavia’s last king and heir to the throne. “Tito had 40 — but he lived like an emperor.”

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The results of Sunday’s Bosnian election show the Balkan country’s electorate remains trapped in an ethnic divide that has made the country virtually dysfunctional and alienated investors.

Like other emerging Balkan countries, Bosnia aspires to join the European Union but lags almost all others in the region. It cannot apply until the international protectorate oversight, introduced in 1996 in the wake of Europe’s most serious conflict since World War Two, is removed.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The son of Bosnia’s wartime Muslim leader was set to become one of its three presidents, election results showed Monday, but officials said possible fraud could affect the victory of the Serb presidency member.

Since the last vote in 2006, mistrust has deepened between nationalist Croat, Serb and Muslim leaders, and political divisions have widened between the country’s two autonomous regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic.