BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s special war crimes court on Tuesday sentenced 14 former Yugoslav Army soldiers and paramilitaries to a total of 128 years in jail for the 1991 killings of 70 Croat civilians, some of whom were ordered to walk through a minefield.

In a ruling Belgrade hopes will boost its chances of joining the European Union, the court said it had been proven beyond doubt that the defendants were guilty of the killings, and of mistreating and torturing the civilian population.

BELGRADE, June 25 (Reuters) – Serbia plans to halt
production at the loss-making Smederevo steel mill next month
and send most of its 5,500 workforce home with reduced salaries
until after company’s sale expected in September, a government
official said on Monday.

The government last December bought back the loss-making
plant from U.S. Steel for a nominal $1 to avert closure.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia is investigating 13 people, including a former top-ranking security official, on suspicion of helping Serb war crimes fugitives evade justice, the country’s war crimes prosecutor said on Friday.

The announcement followed criticism last month by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia of Serbia’s efforts to uncover the networks that for years helped protect war crimes fugitives including Bosnian Serb genocide suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia will step up efforts to win accession to the European Union and seek regional reconciliation, the new president said on Friday, aiming to improve his image which has been tainted by controversial policies and remarks.

Shortly after his surprise election victory last month Tomislav Nikolic, a former ultra-nationalist, sparked anger in the Balkans by denying the genocide of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia edged closer to reviving its outgoing coalition government on Tuesday after the reformist Democratic Party and its Socialist allies said they had agreed on policy but needed “a few days” to divide up power.

A government headed by the Democrats’ Boris Tadic would help calm nerves in Europe and the region, rattled last month by a presidential run-off in which liberal Tadic, president since 2004, lost to nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – The leaders of Serbia’s ex-Yugoslav neighbours stayed away from the ceremonial inauguration of nationalist President Tomislav Nikolic on Monday, underscoring doubts in the region over his commitment to reconciliation after the wars of the 1990s.

Last month’s surprise election of Nikolic, long depicted in the West as the ideological heir to late Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic, sent a chill through a region still coming to terms with the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in which over 125,000 people died.

BELGRADE, June 6 (Reuters) – The battered Serbian dinar
clawed back some ground against the euro on
Wednesday on expectations that the central bank would raise its
benchmark rate the following day.

The dinar has been in steady decline since the start of the
year and hit euro-era lows after the election on May 20 of
opposition leader Tomislav Nikolic as president, a shock result
that came on the heels of an inconclusive parliamentary
election.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia risks a debt crisis this year and next, with “uncontrolled” currency depreciation and rising inflation unless it urgently reins in spending and borrowing, the country’s top financial watchdog warned on Wednesday.

Serbia’s overspending has already led the International Monetary Fund to put its 1 billion euro ($1.25 billion) standby loan deal on hold. Without that support, the dinar currency has slide to record lows against the euro since rightist opposition leader Tomislav Nikolic’s shock defeat of pro-Western reformer Boris Tadic in presidential elections on May 20.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbian President-elect Tomislav Nikolic, last in power when NATO bombed Serbia in 1999, faced the challenge on Monday of proving he has swung behind the country’s pro-Western course, after a shock victory that rattled the region.

The election of Nikolic, a former ultranationalist ally of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic who says he now supports Serbia’s goal of joining the European Union, plunged the country into political uncertainty.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – The election of rightist Tomislav Nikolic as president has plunged Serbia into a period of deep political uncertainty and unnerved a region that associates him with the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia.

Nikolic beat liberal Boris Tadic in a close-run vote in which less than half the electorate turned out, breaking an almost 12-year hold on power by the reformists who ousted Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.