Timeline Serbia 2000-2009
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2000 Jan 1,
Folksinger Svetlana Velickovic, popularly known as Ceca and the wife of
Zeljko Raznatovic, released her most recent CD .
(SFEC, 1/16/00, p.A16)
2000 Jan 7, In Kosovo 2 Serbian
women were killed by an ethnic Albanian gang in Prizren. Attacks in the
last 2 days had left 4 Serb men wounded and 1 dead.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A10)
2000 Jan 13, In Vitina, Kosovo,
Merita Shabiu, an 11-year-old Albanian girl, was raped and murdered. On
Jan 16 American soldier, Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi (35), was charged
for the rape and murder. Ronghi later confessed and was sentenced to
life in prison.
(SFC, 1/17/00, p.A10)(WSJ, 1/17/00, p.A1)(SFC,
1/24/00, p.A9)(SFC, 8/2/00, p.A14)
2000 Jan 13, Serbian authorities
charged 144 jailed ethnic Albanians with terrorism in Kosovo during
1999.
(SFC, 1/14/00, p.D2)
2000 Jan 15, In Belgrade Serbian
paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic (47), aka Arkan, was shot dead
along with associates. Serb police later arrested 3 suspects, Dobrosav
Gavric (23), Dejan Pitulic (33), and Vujadin Krstic (36), and called
the murder a gangland hit.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, p.A1,16)(SFEC, 1/23/00, p.A27)(WSJ,
1/24/00, p.A23)
2000 Jan 26, The EU and Yugoslavia
crafted a $24 million plan to clear Danube River bridge debris due to
NATO bombing.
(WSJ, 1/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 26, In Serbia police
killed 2 ethnic Albanian brothers on the southern border known as
Eastern Kosovo.
(SFEC, 3/5/00, p.A25)
2000 Feb 2, In Kosovo a rocket
attack on a NATO escorted bus filled with Serb civilians killed 2
villagers and wounded 3.
(SFC, 2/3/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 3, In Kosovo violence
broke out in Mitrovica with 2 grenade attacks that left 20 people
wounded and shootings that left 3 ethnic Albanians dead. The number of
deaths were later increased to 7.
(SFC, 2/4/00, p.D5)(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A26)
2000 Feb 5, In Kosovo 41 people,
including 11 French soldiers, were injured in during a 2nd day of
clashes between peacekeepers and Albanians.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A26)
2000 Feb 7, In Belgrade Pavle
Bulatovic (51), the defense minister for Yugoslavia, was shot and
killed at a soccer club restaurant.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 13, In Yugoslavia the
cyanide spill from Romania reached the Danube and weakened to nonlethal
levels. Life in the Tisa (Tisza) River in Hungary and Serbia was
devastated and Serbia threatened to demand compensation at an int'l.
court.
(SFC, 2/14/00, p.A16)
2000 Feb 13, In Kosovo snipers
wounded 2 French peacekeepers who responded by later killing an ethnic
Albanian and wounding at least 4 others. Serbs had earlier thrown a
grenade into a crowd of ethnic Albanians in Mitrovica.
(SFC, 2/14/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 14, The EU lifted a ban
on flights to Yugoslavia but tightened travel restrictions on officials
close to the Milosevic regime.
(WSJ, 2/15/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 15, Pres. Milosevic
appointed Dragoljub Ojdanic as defense minister.
(SFC, 5/16/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 20, In Mitrovica, Kosovo,
angry Serbs pelted US troops in the northern district during a citywide
search for weapons.
(SFC, 2/21/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 21, In Mitrovica, Kosovo,
some 10-25,000 ethnic Albanians clashed with NATO-led troops, who kept
them from crossing to the Serb section of town.
(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/22/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 27, In Serbia growing
numbers of Albanians had fled the southern towns of Presevo, Bujanova
and Medveda and crossed over to Kosovo as Yugoslav police conducted
aggressive searches for Albanian separatists. Belgrade believed that
the 480-sq. mile region planned to break away to join Kosovo.
(SFC, 2/28/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 2, In Kosovo French
peacekeepers forced their way through Serb protestors to return 41
Albanians to their homes across the Ibar River.
(SFC, 3/4/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 6, Serbia sealed its
border with Montenegro as relations worsened.
(WSJ, 3/7/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 7, In Kosovo 24 civilians
and 16 French peacekeepers were wounded in a street battle that
escalated from a fight between a Serb and Albanian ion Mitrovica.
(WSJ, 3/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 15, In Kosovo US troops
raided 5 locations in southeastern Kosovo and seized large quantities
of arms and ammunition from militant Albanians.
(SFC, 3/16/00, p.A16)
2000 Mar 16, In Serbia some 1000
people rallied in Pirot to protest the closure of their TV station. It
was the 6th closure of a broadcaster in a week.
(SFC, 3/17/00, p.D2)
2000 Apr 14, In Serbia some
100,000 people rallied against Pres. Milosevic in Belgrade.
(SFC, 4/15/0, p.A12)
2000 Apr 17, Vojislav Zivkovic
(49), head of the ruling Socialist Party in Kosovo during the NATO
bombings, committed suicide.
(WSJ, 4/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 25, In Serbia Zika
Petrovic (62), head of the Yugoslav Airlines and ally of Pres.
Milosevic, was shot to death near his home in Belgrade.
(SFC, 4/26/00, p.A16)
2000 Apr, Ramush Haradinaj, senior
commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army, formed the Alliance for the
Future of Kosovo (AAK).
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.37)
2000 May 13, In Yugoslavia Bosko
Perosevic (43), head of the Vojvodina provincial government, was shot
and killed at a trade fair. Milivoje Gutovic (50), an off-duty security
guard, was arrested for the murder. Pres. Milosevic later blamed the
student organization Otpor and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement
party.
(SFC, 5/14/00, p.C13)(SFC, 5/15/00, p.A12)
2000 May 15, In Belgrade some
20,000 opposition supporters rallied for free elections and the
resignation of Pres. Milosevic.
(WSJ, 5/16/00, p.A1)
2000 May 17, Pres. Milosevic
ordered the seizure of independent radio and TV stations and charging
that they were advocating an uprising against the government. Tens of
thousands protested the crackdown.
(SFC, 5/18/00, p.A10)(WSJ, 5/18/00, p.A1)
2000 May 22, In Yugoslavia a
Serbian court convicted 143 ethnic Albanians from Djakovica, Kosovo, on
terrorism charges for attacks against Serbian police during 1999 NATO
bombings.
(SFC, 5/23/00, p.A14)
2000 May 25, Yugoslavia ordered
all universities to close a week early for the spring semester in fear
of a student uprising against the government crackdown on independent
media.
(SFC, 5/26/00, p.A17)
2000 May 28, In Kosovo,
Yugoslavia, an attacker shot and killed a 4-year-old Serb boy and 2 men
in Cermica.
(SFC, 5/30/00, p.A14)
2000 Jun 1, In Kosovo Albanians
killed a woman and wounded 3 men when they opened fire on a group of
Serbs in the US zone.
(WSJ, 6/2/00, p.A1)
2000 Jun 2, In Kosovo 2 Serb
villagers were killed when their vehicle drove over a land mine near
Pristina. A mother and her 2 children were injured.
(SFC, 6/3/00, p.A12)
2000 Jun 15, In Kosovo 2 Serbs
were killed and another wounded when their vehicle ran over a land
mine. NATO peacekeepers raided an ethnic Albanian stronghold in Drenica
and seized a large quantity of weapons and ammunition. Halil Dreshaj, a
member of the Democratic League of Kosovo, was shot and killed by
masked men wearing uniforms of the disbanded KLA.
(SFC, 6/15/00, p.A19)(SFC, 6/17/00, p.A10)
2000 Jun 16, Serb opposition
leader Vuk Draskovic was slightly wounded in an assassination attempt
at his vacation home in Budva, Montenegro.
(SFC, 6/16/00, p.A19)
2000 Jul 6, Pres. Milosevic
changed the constitution to allow himself to run for re-election. He
also reduced Montenegro’s power in the Yugoslav federation by changing
how delegates are selected for the upper house.
(SFC, 7/7/00, p.A12)
2000 Jul 10, In Kosovo an Albanian
boy (5) was killed when an American soldier’s rifle discharged
accidentally.
(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A14)
2000 Jul 16, In Kosovo 66 pounds
of explosives razed the church of the Holy Prophet Elijah near Kosovo
Polje.
(WSJ, 7/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 26, Reporter Miroslav
Filipovic was convicted of espionage for writing of Serb atrocities in
Kosovo from May 1999.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.C16)
2000 Jul 27, Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic called presidential, parliamentary and local
elections for the following September. The election resulted in
Milosevic’s fall from power.
(AP, 7/27/01)
2000 Jul 31, Yugoslavia announced
that it had arrested 4 Dutch men for plotting to kidnap or kill Pres.
Milosevic to win a $5 million US reward.
(WSJ, 8/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Aug 1, Two Britons and 2
Canadians were arrested in northern Montenegro while driving to Kosovo
on suspicion of spying and terrorism.
(SFC, 8/8/00, p.A12)
2000 Aug 4, The 8.5 million Serb
population included some 40,000 Chinese.
(SFC, 8/4/00, p.A18)
2000 Aug 4, Dragan Jovanovic,
Vlastimir Aleksic and Dragica Peica, Serbs accused of genocide and war
crimes, escaped from a hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica.
(SFC, 8/5/00, p.A11)
2000 Aug 14, NATO peacekeepers
shut down the Serb-run Trepca smelter at Zvecan, Kosovo, due to
environmental pollution. [see May, 1999]
(SFC, 8/15/00, p.A12)
2000 Aug 24, Opinion polls showed
Pres. Milosevic trailing behind Vojislav Kostunica.
(SFC, 8/25/00, p.A18)
2000 Aug 25, Former Serbian
president Ivan Stambolic (64) disappeared. In 2003 his body was found
in a lime-covered grave on a mountain in northern Serbia. In 2005
Milosevic's paramilitary commander, his secret police chief and five
others were convicted and sentenced for the killing of Stambolic.
(SFC, 9/1/00, p.A16)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A10)(AP,
3/28/03)(AP, 7/18/05)
2000 Sep 21, A Belgrade court
found Pres. Clinton and other world leaders guilty of war crimes for
the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. 14 leaders were sentenced in
absentia to 20 years in prison. The 120-page indictment charged the
leaders for the deaths of 546 Yugoslav army soldiers, 138 Serbian
police officers and 504 civilians, including 88 children.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.A16)
2000 Sep 24, Elections in Serbia
and Montenegro showed Vojislav Kostunica leading by a wide margin over
Pres. Milosevic.
(SFC, 9/25/00, p.A1)
2000 Sep 25, In Serbia Vojislav
Kostunica declared victory over Pres. Milosevic.
(SFC, 9/26/00, p.A1)
2000 Sep 26, The Yugoslav
government conceded loss in the elections but called for a runoff
saying Kostunica won only 48% vs. 40% for Milosevic.
(SFC, 9/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Sep 27, Some 200,000 people
gathered in Belgrade to support the opposition’s claims to electoral
triumph.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A16)
2000 Sep 29, Thousands rallied
across the country against Pres. Milosevic.
(SFC, 9/30/00, p.A10)
2000 Sep 30, Slobodan Milosevic
turned down offers of Russian mediation.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A16)
2000 Oct 2, In Serbia the
opposition staged a general strike as Pres. Milosevic went on national
TV and called on his countrymen to re-elect him. In his first public
address since a disputed election, Milosevic branded his opponents
puppets of the West. A wave of unrest aimed at driving him from power
swept Yugoslavia, and the government responded by arresting dozens of
strike leaders.
(SFC, 10/3/00, p.A8)(AP, 10/2/01)
2000 Oct 3, The government ordered
the arrest of some strike leaders.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A16)
2000 Oct 4, The Constitutional
Court set aside part of the Sep 24 voting results in a move seen to buy
time for Pres. Milosevic. Citizens blocked an attempt by the government
to use force against strikers and protesters. Major protests were
planned to force Milosevic from office.
(SFC, 10/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 5, Vojislav Kostunica
spoke from the balcony of City Hall as several hundred thousand
protestors, led by workers from Cacak, took over Belgrade, the
parliament building and TV station. The state Tanjug news agency
switched allegiance to Vojislav Kostunica.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A1,16)(SFC, 10/7/00, p.A8)
2000 Oct 6, In Serbia Slobodan
Milosevic resigned and the opposition celebrated across the country.
Milosevic conceded defeat to Vojislav Kostunica in Yugoslavia's
presidential elections, a day after protesters angry at Milosevic for
clinging to power stormed parliament and ended his 13-year autocratic
regime.
(SFC, 10/7/00, p.A1)(AP, 10/6/01)
2000 Oct 7, In Serbia Vojislav
Kostunica was sworn in as the 1st popularly elected president of
Yugoslavia. He was backed by an 18-party coalition.
(SFEC 10/8/00, p.A1)(SFC, 10/9/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 9, The EU lifted an oil
embargo and other sanctions against Yugoslavia as Pres. Kostunica
secured the resignations of Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic and Interior
Minister Vlajko Stojilkovic.
(SFC, 10/10/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 12, Pres. Clinton lifted
key economic sanctions against Serbia.
(SFC, 10/13/00, p.A16)
2000 Oct 13, A new agreement was
reached to hold parliamentary elections on Dec 24.
(SFC, 10/14/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 13, Janko "Tuta" Janjic
(43), a war crimes suspect, killed himself in Foca, a town in the Serb
section of Bosnia, when NATO troops came to arrest him.
(SFC, 10/14/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 16, Milosevic allies
agreed to share power until elections. A German newspaper reported that
the Milosevic family had $100 million in foreign accounts with some of
the money from drug trafficking. Swiss authorities had already frozen
100 bank accounts worth $57 million linked to Milosevic and his allies.
(WSJ, 10/17/00, p.A1)(SFC, 10/21/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 17, Montenegro Pres. Milo
Djukanovic refused to take part in national institutions with Serbia
until the Montenegro-Serbia relationship is redefined.
(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 23, The Int’l. Commission
on Kosovo recommended that Kosovo become a separate state when the
safety of its minorities can be guaranteed.
(SFC, 10/24/00, p.A16)
2000 Oct 27, Pres. Kostunica
applied for Yugoslavia’s membership in the United Nations.
(SFC, 10/28/00, p.A14)
2000 Oct 28, In Kosovo municipal
elections were held. Ibrahim Rugova declared victory for his League for
a Democratic Kosovo (LDK) and won 21 of 27 contested municipalities.
The AAK won 9 seats.
(SFEC, 10/29/00, p.A17)(SFC, 10/29/00, p.A1)(SFC,
10/31/00, p.A14)(Econ, 1/1/05, p.37)
2000 Tim Judah authored "Kosovo:
War and Revenge."
(SFEC, 5/7/00, BR p.5)
2000 Michael Ignatieff authored
"Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond," the 3rd volume in a trilogy on ethnic
nationalism and war.
(SFEC, 5/7/00, BR p.5)
2000 Nov 1, Yugoslavia was
accepted into the United Nations.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A12)
2000 Nov 1, In Serbia Flora
Brovina, an Albanian activist, was released from prison after serving
18 months for alleged terrorism.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A12)
2000 Nov 4, The Yugoslavia
parliament approved a new government under Pres. Kostunica by a vote of
136-19.
(SFEC, 11/5/00, p.A15)
2000 Nov 6, In Serbia prisoners
rioted in Sremska Mitrovica for shorter sentences and a new prison
management. They were also angry over a proposed amnesty law that would
free Albanian political prisoners.
(SFC, 11/7/00, p.B2)
2000 Nov 7, Prisoner riots
expanded to Pozarevac and Nis where the rape of women inmates was
reported.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B4)
2000 Nov 9, In Kosovo 4 Gypsies
were killed in an ambush.
(WSJ, 11/10/00, p.A1)
2000 Nov 16, The US and Yugoslavia
agreed to reopen embassies in each others capitals.
(SFC, 11/17/00, p.A20)
2000 Nov 21, Slobodan Milosevic
was declared the only candidate for head of the Socialist Party.
(SFC, 11/22/00, p.A19)
2000 Nov 22, In Serbia ethnic
Albanians were blamed for police assaults in the Presevo Valley and 4
officers were reported killed over 2 days as rebel fighters moved in
from Kosovo.
(SFC, 11/23/00, p.D8)
2000 Nov 23, In Kosovo Xhemail
Mustafa (46), pacifist advisor to Ibrahim Rugova, was shot dead by 2
gunmen in Pristina.
(SFC, 11/24/00, p.A20)
2000 Nov 24, In Serbia police gave
Nato a 72-hour deadline to stop incursions from Kosovo by ethnic
Albanian militants.
(SFC, 11/25/00, p.A15)
2000 Dec 23, In national elections
the 18-party Kostunica coalition won 64.5% of the vote and over
two-thirds of the seats of the 250-seat parliament. Zoran Djindjic (48)
was projected to become prime minister.
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.A12)(SFC, 12/25/00, p.A16)
2000 Dec 26, In Montenegro 3
military commanders were dismissed by the Yugoslav top defense body as
a concession to Pres. Djukanovic.
(SFC, 12/27/00, p.A16)
2000 Dec 26, Power shortages due
to the summer drought caused cuts across the country.
(SFC, 12/27/00, p.A16)
2001 Jan 19, Pres. Clinton lifted
economic sanctions against Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 1/20/01, p.A11)
2001 Jan 26, Albanian brothers Isa
and Sait Saqipi were shot to death by Serbian police while returning
from the market in Bujanovac.
(SFC, 2/20/01, p.A10)
2001 Jan 29, Serb thrown hand
grenades hit an ethnic Albanian home in Kosovo. 1 person was killed, 2
injured and NATO peacekeepers broke up an ensuing riot.
(SFC, 1/30/01, p.A11)
2001 Jan, Dusan Mihailovic became
the interior minister.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.C1)
2001 Feb 6, Ethnic Albanian rebels
fired mortar from Kosovo shells against government positions in Serbia.
(SFC, 2/7/01, p.A14)
2001 Feb 16, Kosovo militants
killed 9 Serbs and injured 43 with a roadside bomb that blew up a bus
in northeastern Kosovo.
(SFC, 2/17/01, p.A12)(SSFC, 2/18/01, p.D1)
2001 Feb 18, A suspected mine
ripped a police van and 3 Serbian officers were killed just outside
Kosovo.
(SFC, 2/19/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb 22, A UN tribunal on
Yugoslav War Crimes found 3 Bosnian Serbs guilty of crimes against
humanity for the rape, torture and enslavement of Muslim women in Foca
between 1992-1993. The landmark case established rape and sexual
enslavement as a crime against humanity. They were sentenced to 28, 20
and 12 years, respectively.
(SFC, 2/23/01, p.A1)(AP, 11/1/07)
2001 Feb 26, The parliament passed
an amnesty law to free several hundred Kosovo Albanians held in Serbian
prisons since the 1999 Kosovo war.
(SFC, 2/27/01, p.A12)
2001 Mar 4, Macedonia sealed its
border with Kosovo after 3 soldiers were killed in heavy fighting with
ethnic Albanian rebels.
(WSJ, 3/5/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 5, In Macedonia heavy
fighting against ethnic Albanian rebels continued for a 2nd day on the
border with Kosovo.
(SFC, 3/6/01, p.A12)
2001 Mar 7, In Serbia NATO
soldiers moved into the Kosovo village of Mijak to stem the flow of
arms to Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia.
(SFC, 3/8/01, p.A12)
2001 Mar 9, Ethnic Albanian rebels
launched attacks on Macedonian and Yugoslav forces on the Kosovo
border. 2 people were killed.
(SFC, 3/10/01, p.A8)
2001 Mar 12, Yugoslavia and Nato
agreed to use their forces to squeeze Albanian rebels from separate
flanks as the rebels signed a cease-fire.
(SFC, 3/13/01, p.A15)
2001 Mar 29, Macedonian forces
chased rebels into Kosovo and 3 people were killed from mortar fire in
Kosovo.
(SFC, 3/30/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 31, In Serbia commandos
stormed the residence of Slobodan Milosevic and attempted to arrest him
as the US deadline for cooperation with the UN War Crimes tribunal
approached. But a defiant Milosevic rejected a warrant, reportedly
telling police he wouldn't "go to jail alive." He was taken into
custody the next day.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A1)(AP, 3/31/02)
2001 Apr 1, In Serbia Former
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was arrested on corruption
charges after a 26-hour armed standoff with the police at his Belgrade
villa.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.A1)(AP, 4/1/02)
2001 Apr 9, In Kosovo a British
helicopter crashed near the Macedonia border and 2 people were killed
with 5 injured.
(SFC, 4/10/01, p.A11)
2001 Apr 15, U.N. investigators
arrested Bosnian Serb army officer Dragan Obrenovic in connection with
the Serbian Army's slaughter of as many as 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
Obrenovic later pleaded guilty to five war crimes charges and testified
against his one-time superior officers; he was sentenced to 17 years in
prison.
(AP, 4/15/06)
2001 Apr 18, It was reported that
the right-wing "Obraz" (Dignity) group was emerging with rhetoric aimed
against Jews, gays, Croats, Albanians and several other groups.
(SFC, 4/18/01, p.A12)
2001 Apr 19, In Kosovo Nato troops
broke up Serb roadblocks set up to protest UN tax collections on goods
from elsewhere in Yugoslavia.
(WSJ, 4/20/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 24, The Yugoslav army was
reported to have charged 183 soldiers with crimes committed during the
war in Kosovo.
(SFC, 4/25/01, p.A12)
2001 May 3, Slobodan Milosevic was
issued an arrest warrant from the UN war crimes tribunal in his jail
cell.
(SFC, 5/4/01, p.D3)
2001 May 15, Yugoslav forces
forced ethnic Albanian rebels from the village of Oraovica in the
Kosovo-Macedonia buffer zone. 14 rebels were reported killed.
(SFC, 5/16/01, p.A10)(WSJ, 5/17/01, p.A1)
2001 May 22, Ethnic Albanian
rebels in southern Serbia began laying aside their weapons for
collection by NATO.
(SFC, 5/23/01, p.A12)
2001 May 25, Police linked former
Pres. Slobodan Milosevic to a 1999 coverup of Kosovo atrocities that
included the dumping of bodies in the Danube.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)
2001 Jun 23, The Yugoslav Cabinet
adopted a decree that committed itself to sending former Pres.
Milosevic to the UN Tribunal in The Hague.
(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.A1)
2001 Jun 25, Jun 25, Yugoslavia
asked a court to let Milosevic be extradited to the Hague for was UN
war crimes trial.
(WSJ, 6/26/01, p.A1)
2001 Jun 28, Serbia sent former
Pres. Milosevic to the Hague for a war-crimes trial, the 1st for an
ex-head of state.
(WSJ, 6/29/01, p. A1)(SFC, 6/29/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 3, In the Hague,
Netherlands, former Yugoslav Pres. Milosevic refused to respond to
charges and called the tribunal illegitimate.
(SFC, 7/4/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 6, In Belgrade Radomar
Markovic, the former Yugoslav secret police chief, was sentenced to a
year in jail with 3 other top security aides for revealing state
secrets.
(SFC, 7/7/01, p.B1)
2001 Jul 15, It was reported that
a mass grave found a week earlier near Petrovo Selo contained the
bodies of 3 Albanian-American men from Long Island.
(SSFC, 7/15/01, p.A14)
2001 Jul 16, Authorities began
exhuming bodies from another mass grave near Belgrade.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A7)
2001 Aug 2, The UN war crimes
tribunal found Radislav Krstic, former Bosnian Serb general, guilty for
the 1995 genocide of some 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. He was
sentenced to 46 years in prison. A 2004 appeal reduced the sentence to
35 years.
(SFC, 8/3/01, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/gm9l9)
2001 Aug 20, It was reported that
Vojvodina, a northern province of Serbia, was actively seeking
autonomy. The area is home to 2 million people representing 20 ethnic
groups.
(SFC, 8/20/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 21, In Kosovo gunmen
killed 5 Albanians.
(WSJ, 8/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 24, Yugoslavia’s Pres.
Kostunica accused Serbia’s government of failure to tackle rising crime
and corruption.
(SFC, 8/25/01, p.A8)
2001 Sep 8, In Serbia 26
unidentified bodies were exhumed from a site near Lake Perucac. They
were believed to be bodies of ethnic Albanians from the 1999 crackdown
in Kosovo.
(SFC, 9/10/01, p.B2)
2001 Sep 10, The UN Security
Council ended an arms embargo against Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 9/11/01, p.B3)
2001 Sep 18, In Serbia a court
reported that 269 bodies had been removed from a mass grave at
Batajnica, 6 miles north of Belgrade. The bodies were suspected to be
ethnic Albanians killed in the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo.
(SFC, 9/19/01, p.B4)
2001 Oct 29, In The Hague former
Yugoslav Pres. Slobodan Milosevic was indicted on new charges for
crimes in Croatia in 1991. He refused to enter pleas.
(SFC, 10/30/01, p.A11)
2001 Nov 17, Kosovo voted in a
symbolic step toward independence. Ibrahim Rugova claimed victory the
next day and issued a call for quick independence. Ex-rebel leader
Hashim Thaci made a strong showing and a coalition was expected.
(WSJ, 11/16/01, p.A1)(SFC, 11/19/01, p.A13)(WSJ,
11/19/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 23, In Belgium the UN war
crimes tribunal announced that Slobodan Milosevic, former Yugoslav
president, would stand trial on charges of genocide in the 1992-1995
war in Bosnia. Milosevic died in March 2006 while his trial was in
progress.
(SFC, 11/24/01, p.A11)(AP, 11/23/06)
2001 Dec 10, In Kosovo the
120-member, multiethnic, legislative assembly opened for the 1st time
in 12 years.
(SFC, 12/11/01, p.A5)
2002 Feb 14, In the Netherlands
Slobodan Milosevic spoke on his own behalf on the 3rd day of his trial.
He denied all blame for a decade of carnage in the Balkans and
displayed pictures of victims of NATO air raids.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.A8)
2002 Mar 4, In Kosovo Ibrahim
Rugova, moderate Albanian leader, became Kosovo’s 1st president and
joined PM Bajram Rexhepi to push for independence.
(SFC, 3/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Mar 14, Yugoslavia was
declared dead as Serbia and Montenegro agreed to rename their
federation: "Serbia and Montenegro."
(SFC, 3/15/02, p.A6)
2002 Mar 14, Yugoslav military
forces arrested a US diplomat and Yugoslav general outside Belgrade
with accusations of espionage. The diplomat was released after 15
hours. Former Gen. Perisic, deputy Prime Minister, was released
Mar 16.
(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A8)(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.A20)
2002 Mar 26, In Serbia 2 Albanian
gunmen were killed in what police said was a battle between rebel
factions.
(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 28, A US diplomat,
reportedly the CIA station chief, was pulled from Belgrade following
accusations that he was receiving military secrets.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 31, Serbia’s government,
faced with a midnight suspension of US aid, issued arrest warrants
against 4 former Milosevic associates.
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A6)
2002 Apr 8, In Kosovo Serbs rioted
following the arrest of a man guarding a bridge to keep out ethnic
Albanians. 19 UN policemen were injured.
(WSJ, 4/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 11, Vlajko Stojilkovic
(65), former Serb interior minister, shot himself in the head on the
steps of the Yugoslav parliament following passage of a law easing the
transfer of war crimes suspects to the Hague. Stojilkovic died Apr 13.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.A9)(SSFC, 4/14/02, p.A14)
2002 Apr 17, Yugoslavia published
a list of 23 people that it said should surrender or face arrest for
Balkan war crimes.
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A11)
2002 Apr 23, Six of 23 indicted
Serbs agreed to surrender to the UN court.
(SFC, 4/24/02, p.A7)
2002 Apr 25, Gen. Dragoljub
Pjdanic (60) surrendered to the war crimes tribunal. He pleaded not
guilty the next day for the murder and forced removal of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo.
(SFC, 4/27/02, p.A11)
2002 May, Bozidar Djelic, finance
minister, celebrated his 37th birthday. His finance team over the last
18 months had removed most government price controls, simplified the
tax code, launched a privatization program, passed a labor law that
allowed companies to hire and fire, and closed the nation’s 4 biggest
bankrupt banks.
(WSJ, 5/14/02, p.A14)
2002 May 21, The Bush
administration announced that it would resume economic aid to
Yugoslavia because it had met requirements to cooperate with the war
crimes tribunal in The Hague.
(SFC, 5/22/02, p.A15)
2000 Jun 10, Assailants in Serbia
gunned down Gen. Bosko Buha (42), a high-ranking police officer and
former Belgrade police chief.
(AP, 6/10/02)(SFC, 6/11/02, p.A11)
2002 Jun 12, The party of
Yugoslavia's president withdrew from the parliament of the nation's
main republic, declaring Serbia's legislature invalid and creating the
worst political crisis in the country since Slobodan Milosevic's ouster.
(AP, 6/12/02)
2002 Jul 9, NATO troops arrested
Radovan Stankovic (33), a former member of an elite Serb paramilitary
unit, for allegedly running a house where women and girls were raped
during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
(AP, 7/9/02)(SFC, 7/10/02, p.A8)
2002 Jul 28, Serbs and ethnic
Albanians voted for new, power-sharing local governments in a tense
region near Kosovo.
(AP, 7/28/02)
2002 Jul 29, Serbia's ruling
coalition moved to oust all 45 members of Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica's party from parliament, the latest threat to Yugoslavia's
political stability.
(AP, 7/29/02)
2002 Aug 22, The US and Russia
took away 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging nuclear
reactor in Belgrade to Russia for re-processing.
(SFC, 8/23/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 23, In Yugoslavia
thousands of ethnic Albanians gathered in Pristina to protest the
recent arrests of rebel leaders who fought during Kosovo's 1998-1999
war.
(AP, 8/23/02)
2002 Sep 29, Serbian voters picked
a new president from among 11 candidates. Vojislav Kostunica (31%) will
face Deputy PM Miroljub Labus (28%), a pro-Western candidate, in a
runoff vote Oct 13 in Serbia's 1st presidential election since the
ouster of Slobodan Milosevic.
(AP, 9/29/02)(AP, 9/30/02)(SFC, 9/30/02, p.A16)
2002 Oct 3, The United States
forgave two-thirds of Yugoslavia's debt on in a sign of improving
relations with the country's reformist leadership.
(AP, 10/3/02)
2002 Oct 13, In Serbia a moderate
nationalist and a pro-Western pragmatist faced each other in the second
round of presidential elections. Less than 50% of the electorate turned
out rendering the results invalid.
(AP, 10/13/02)(SFC, 10/14/02, p.A9)
2002 Oct 14, In Serbia Pres.
Kostunica protested that some 630,000 ghost voters inflated the number
of voters.
(SFC, 10/15/02, p.A8)
2002 Oct 22, The Yugoslav
government released a statement saying it had dismissed Jovan Cekovic,
a former army general, and chief of Yugoimport following NATO evidence
that it had engaged in exporting and refurbishing military equipment
for Iraq.
(SFC, 10/23/02, p.A9)
2002 Oct 26, In Kosovo voters in
30 municipalities elected 920 local councilors for U.N.-supervised
assemblies that are slated to assume increased authority over the
coming years.
(AP, 10/26/02)
2002 Oct 27, A Kosovo mayor was
killed with 2 guards by allies of a rival ethnic Albanian party.
(WSJ, 10/28/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 8, In Serbia voters chose
between a moderate nationalist and two extreme right-wing candidates to
become president.
(AP, 12/8/02)
2002 Dec 9, Serbia headed for a
major political crisis after it failed a second time to elect a
president, with supporters of the top vote-getter vowing to challenge
the outcome.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2003 Jan 5, In Kosovo gunmen
killed 3 people including Tahir Zemaj, a former Albanian rebel leader.
(WSJ, 1/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 20, Milan Milutinovic,
Serbia's former president, surrendered to the Yugoslav war crimes
tribunal to face charges that he was complicit in a crackdown on ethnic
Albanians.
(AP, 1/20/03)
2003 Jan 29, Montenegro lawmakers
voted to abolish Yugoslavia and replace it with a loose union of
semi-independent states called Serbia and Montenegro.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A8)
2003 Feb 4, Yugoslavia’s
parliament transformed the federation into a loose union between
Montenegro and Serbia and retired the name "Yugoslavia."
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 27, Biljana
Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb leader who expressed remorse for the
horrors committed against non-Serbs during the Bosnian war, was
sentenced to 11 years in prison. Later this year she was transferred to
Sweden to serve her sentence.
(AP, 2/27/03)(AP, 9/15/09)
2003 Mar 3, Lawmakers from
Serbia and Montenegro inaugurated their new parliament, formally
replacing Yugoslavia with the new state.
(AP, 3/3/03)
2003 Mar 12, Serbia’s PM Zoran
Djindjic was assassinated in Belgrade. A group called "The Hague
Brotherhood" was later implicated along with the paramilitary
group Unit for Special Operations. [see Mar 24].
(SFC, 4/9/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 18, In Serbia the
parliament elected Zoran Zivkovic to replace assassinated PM Zoran
Djindjic. Zivkovic promised to continue reforms, fight crime and bring
war crimes suspects to justice.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 19, Serbian lawmakers
forced 35 judges into retirement for failing to prosecute underworld
bosses.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.A15)
2003 Mar 20, In Serbia nearly
1,000 people were arrested in a crackdown on criminal groups following
the assassination of Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic.
(AP, 3/20/03)
2003 Mar 24, In Serbia Zvezdan
Jovanovic, a deputy commander of the Unit for Special Operations used
by the former Yugoslav president during the 1990s wars in Bosnia and
Croatia, was arrested for the murder of PM Zoran Djindjic.
(AP, 3/25/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Serbia Milan
Lukovic and Dusan Spasojevic, Zemun Clan leaders and suspects in the
Zoran Djindjic assassination, were killed as they resisted arrest.
(SFC, 3/28/03, p.A12)
2003 Apr 3, Serbia and Montenegro
became a member of the Council of Europe.
(AP, 4/3/03)
2003 Jul 24, Two hand grenades
exploded outside a UN police station in northern Kosovo, killing one
person and injuring four others.
(AP, 7/24/03)
2003 Aug 9, Mitar Rasevic, Bosnian
Serb prison chief of 37 guards at the KP-Dom detention facility in
Foca, surrendered in Belgrade to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. He
was wanted on charges of enslavement, torture and murder at the wartime
prison.
(AP, 8/15/03)
2003 Aug 12, The Serbian
government said it wants to retake control of Kosovo but pledged to
give it "substantial autonomy." Serbia claimed UN officials have failed
to establish democracy there.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2003 Aug 27, Serbia declared
Kosovo part of its territory.
(WSJ, 8/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Sep 7, Goran Markovic's "The
Cordon", a film from Serbia and Montenegro about the behavior of
policemen during the demonstrations against president Slobodan
Milosevic in 1997, won the top prize at the Montreal film festival.
(Reuters, 9/7/03)
2003 Sep 30, A Serbian police
officer went on a shooting spree, killing four of his colleagues and
seriously wounding three others.
(AP, 9/30/03)
2003 Oct 20, Carla del Ponte,
chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Hague,
announced the indictment of 4 top Serb generals for alleged crimes in
Kosovo.
(Econ, 10/25/03, p.47)
2003 Oct 27, UN police and
NATO-led peacekeepers near Pristina, Serbia, arrested 5 former ethnic
Albanian rebels for alleged war crimes in Kosovo.
(AP, 10/28/03)
2003 Oct 27, Prosecutors in the
Netherlands said Momir Nikolic (48), a Bosnian Serb captain who
admitted participating in the mass killing of more than 7,000 Muslim
boys and men in Srebrenica, should serve up to 20 years in
prison. Nikolic accepted that he was on duty when 80-100
prisoners were decapitated and their corpses loaded onto trucks on July
12, 1995. In 2006 a UN appeals court reduced his 27-year sentence to 20
years.
(AP, 10/28/03)(AP, 3/8/06)
2003 Nov 13, Svetozar Marovic,
Serbia-Montenegro's president, apologized in Sarajevo for the pain his
country inflicted upon Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.
(AP, 11/14/03)
2003 Nov 13, Serbia dissolved its
parliament and announced early elections, signaling the collapse of the
government three years after the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. PM Zoran
Zivkovic to agree, under pressure from political defectors and
Milosevic supporters, to set a new parliamentary vote for Dec. 28, a
year ahead of schedule.
(AP, 11/14/03)
2003 Nov 16, Serbia failed for a
3rd time in just over a year to elect a president because voter turnout
was below the 50 percent minimum required by the law. Tomislav Nikolic,
head of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party, led the vote.
(WSJ, 11/13/03, p.A1)(AP, 11/17/03)(Econ, 11/22/03,
p.49)
2003 Dec 4, In eastern Kosovo Sgt.
Daryl Brooks (43), a US peacekeeper, was found dead with a gunshot
wound in a concrete bunker inside the U.S. military base Camp Monteith.
(AP, 12/6/03)
2003 Dec 28, In Serbia
parliamentary elections Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj, along
as well as 2 others indicted for war crimes, contended for seats.
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.A18)
2003 Dec 29, In Serbia Vojislav
Seselj's Radical Party won weekend elections with 27% of the vote.
Nationalists won 82 seats but would have to negotiate with more
moderate parties to form a government. The Socialist Party led by
Slobodan Milosevic won 22 seats.
(WSJ, 12/29/03, p.A1)(SFC, 12/30/03, p.A10)(Econ,
1/3/04, p.35)
2004 Jan 27, Wartime Croatian Serb
leader Milan Babic (1991-1992) pleaded guilty to persecution in a plan
to ethnically cleanse parts of Croatia of non-Serbs at the outset of
the Balkan wars, and expressed "a deep sense of shame" for his crimes.
Babic was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
(AP, 1/27/04)(WSJ, 6/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 1, Kujo Krijestorac (51),
a key witness to the murder of Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic, was gunned
down near his Belgrade home.
(AP, 3/9/04)
2004 Mar 17, In Kosovo ethnic
Albanians traded gunfire with Serbs after blaming them for the
drownings of two boys. The clashes left eight dead and more than 300
injured.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 18, Albanians set fire to
Serb Orthodox churches in Kosovo as NATO scrambled to deploy up to
1,000 more troops to stifle an explosion of ethnic violence. The death
toll reached 31 with hundreds injured in fighting between Serbs and
ethnic Albanians as violence continued for a 2nd day.
(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A13)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.52)
2004 Mar 20, NATO-led forces
surrounded Kosovska Mitrovica in efforts to separate ethnic Albanians
and Serbs and prevent a resurgence of attacks that killed 28 people and
wounded 600. Ethnic Albanians looted villages and apartments abandoned
by Serb civilians. Some 110 homes and at least 16 Serb Orthodox
churches were destroyed by arson.
(AP, 3/20/04)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.47)
2004 Mar 30, Serbian lawmakers
awarded salaries, legal fees and other financial perks to former
President Slobodan Milosevic and fellow Serbian war crimes suspects
being tried by a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands.
(AP, 3/30/04)
2004 Mar 31, The US suspended $26
million in aid to Serbia for refusal to give up war crimes fugitives.
(WSJ, 4/1/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar, In Japan $31.5 million
worth of jewels from an upscale shop in Tokyo were stolen. The jewels
have never been found. On Dec 18, 2009, three Serb members of the
infamous "Pink Panther" ring of thieves were convicted in Belgrade of
Japan's biggest-ever jewel heist, which nabbed treasures including a
$27-million (euro19-million) diamond necklace. Dorothy Fasola, a
British national, was also named in Japanese police papers as one of
the masterminds behind the robbery.
(AP, 12/18/09)(http://tinyurl.com/yfhxvxz)
2004 Apr 17, Sgt. Maj. Ahmed
Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, a Jordanian policeman, shot into a group of U.N.
police officers in a prison compound in Kosovo. Two Americans and the
Jordanian assailant were killed. 10 U.S. officers and an Austrian were
wounded in the gunbattle.
(AP, 4/18/04)(SSFC, 4/18/04, p.A14)
2004 Jun 11, A commission of the
government of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia, finally
admitted that Serbian forces were responsible for the 1995 Muslim
massacre at Srebrenica.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.53)
2004 Jun 13, The race for Serbia's
top job produced no outright winner, but left the two top contenders,
nationalist Tomislav Nikolic and reformist Boris Tadic, to face each
other in a second round of voting in two weeks.
(AP, 6/14/04)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.53)
2004 Jun 27, Serbia held
elections. Pro-Western Boris Tadic led early polls over the
ultranationalist candidate, Tomislav Nikolic. Boris Tadic, won 53.5
percent of votes.
(AP, 6/28/04)
2004 Jun, Soren Jessen-Petersen, a
Danish diplomat, became head of the UN mission running Kosovo. He
replaced Harri Holkeri, who resigned in the wake of the March violence.
(Econ, 6/26/04, p.55)
2004 Jul 11, Boris Tadic (46)
leader of the Serbian opposition Democratic Party, took office vowing
to bring stability to the Balkan republic and push it closer to the EU
and NATO.
(AP, 7/11/04)
2004 Oct 3, Serbs voted for mayors
and other municipal posts in runoff elections.
(AP, 10/3/04)
2004 Oct 5, In Belgrade, Serbia, 2
soldiers were killed guarding the entrance to a secret complex. It was
soon revealed that a 2-square-mile complex, dubbed a "concrete
underground city" by the local media, had been built deep inside a
rocky hill in a residential area in the 1960s on the orders of
communist strongman Josip Broz Tito.
(AP, 11/19/04)
2004 Oct 9, In Serbia Ljubisa
Beara, former colonel and the security chief for the Bosnian Serb
army's main staff, was arrested. He was accused of genocide for the
1995 mass killing of Muslims in the U.N.-protected zone of Srebrenica.
(AP, 10/10/04)
2004 Oct 23, Kosovo's Serb
minority largely boycotted general elections, dealing a blow to
international efforts to create multiethnic harmony in the province.
About 1.3 million voters in Kosovo and some 108,000 Kosovo Serbs living
in Serbia after fleeing the conflict were eligible to elect
representatives to a 120-seat assembly, which will choose a president
and a government that holds limited authority. 10 assembly seats are
reserved for the Serb minority.
(AP, 10/24/04)
2004 Dec 3, Ramush Haradinaj (36)
was elected prime minister of Kosovo.
(http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041213-112138-1866r.htm)
2005 Jan 14, In Kosovo a Nigerian
UN peacekeeper was killed when his car exploded as he drove to work.
(WSJ, 1/14/05, p.A1)
2006 Jan, In the Hague Col. Vidoje
Blagojevic (56), Bosnian Serb wartime commander of the Bratunac
brigade, was convicted of war crimes and complicity in genocide by the
Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal. In 2007 an appeals panel overturned the
charge of complicity in genocide.
(AP, 5/9/07)
2005 Feb 22, Montenegro's
President Filip Vujanovic and PM Milo Djukanovic proposed the peaceful
disintegration of Serbia-Montenegro, suggesting that the two former
Yugoslav republics recognize each other as sovereign states.
(AP, 2/23/05)
2005 Feb 23, Serbia's prime
minister and other top officials flatly rejected Montenegro's proposal
for a final split of their joint state.
(AP, 2/23/05)
2005 Feb 24, The Serbian
government said retired Bosnian Serb General Milan Gvero surrendered to
the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
(AP, 2/21/05)(SFC, 2/25/05, p.A3)
2005 Mar 2, Former Serbian army
chief Gen. Momcilo Perisic, a one-time ally of ex-president Slobodan
Milosevic, said that he has been indicted by the UN war crimes court
and will surrender next week.
(AP, 3/3/05)
2005 Mar 8, Kosovo's PM Ramush
Haradinaj resigned after being indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal
for his alleged part in atrocities during the fight against Serb forces.
(AP, 3/8/05)
2005 Apr 12, An EU feasibility
study deemed Serbia and Montenegro worthy to start accession talks.
(Econ, 4/16/05, p.43)
2005 Jun 2, Serbian police
reported the arrest of at least 8 men they say are shown in a 1995
video killing a group of Bosnian Muslim prisoners from Srebrenica.
(AP, 6/2/05)
2005 Jun 9, The US lifted its
freeze on a $10 million aid package for Serbia-Montenegro, saying the
Balkan country had shown better cooperation with the UN war crimes
tribunal.
(AP, 6/9/05)
2005 Jul 15, In Serbia a court
convicted 4 former members of the Avengers, a Serbian paramilitary
force, of abducting 16 Muslims from a bus in October, 1992, and taking
them to Bosnia to be tortured and executed. The men in custody, Djordje
Sevic and Dragutin Dragicevic, got 15 and 20 years respectively. Two
others, Milan Lukic and Oliver Krsmanovic, were on the run and were
tried in absentia, and received 20-year jail terms
(AP, 7/16/05)
2005 Jul 18, Slobodan Milosevic's
paramilitary commander, his secret police chief and five others were
convicted and sentenced for the 2000 killing of Ivan Stambolic, former
Serbian president who was Milosevic's political rival.
(AP, 7/18/05)
2005 Aug 27, A drive-by shooting
in Kosovo killed two Serbs and wounded two more. Serbia's PM Vojislav
Kostunica blamed the shooting on ethnic Albanians.
(AP, 8/29/05)
2005 Sep 5, Kosovo President
Ibrahim Rugova (1944-2006), linked for decades to the ethnic Albanian
majority's anti-Serb struggle, said he has lung cancer, but he pledged
to stay in office as the U.N.-run province nears crucial talks on its
future.
(AP, 9/5/05)
2005 Sep 15, In Serbia a judge
ordered the arrest of the wife of former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic for failing to attend her corruption trial in Belgrade.
(AP, 9/15/05)
2005 Sep 20, Fiat of Italy struck
a deal with Zastava of Kragujevac, Serbia, to make up to 16,000 cars a
year. Zastava’s arms plant made a recent $3.8 million contract with
Iraq.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.47)
2005 Oct 7, Serbia's war crimes
prosecutors filed charges against five Serb paramilitaries who appeared
in a video showing the execution of six Srebrenica Muslims.
(AP, 10/7/05)
2005 Oct 21, Lawmakers of Serbia
and Montenegro elected Zoran Stankovic (51), a reported ally of
notorious war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, as the new defense minister.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 26, Serbian police
detained nine people on suspicion of taking part in a 1999 massacre of
dozens of ethnic Albanians in southwestern Kosovo.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2005 Nov 1, UN Sec. Gen. Kofi
Annan said he would name Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finish president,
as special envoy to start talks on Kosovo’s future.
(AP, 11/15/05)(Econ, 1/21/06, p.51)
2005 Nov 11, The Hague war crimes
tribunal turned up the heat on Serbia, telling it to deliver top
fugitive Ratko Mladic by the end of this year or face "excommunication."
(Reuters, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 15, The Serbian
government unanimously adopted a resolution rejecting independence for
Kosovo in UN-mediated talks on the future of the breakaway province
expected to begin next month.
(AP, 11/15/05)
2005 Nov 24, Serbia's president
Boris Tadic formally proposed dividing Kosovo between its
independence-seeking Albanian majority and a Serb minority as the chief
UN mediator met with government officials.
(AP, 11/25/05)
2005 Nov 30, The Yugoslav war
crimes tribunal acquitted Fatmir Limaj, a senior officer of the Kosovo
Albanian rebels, of torturing and murdering ethnic Serbian and Albanian
civilians at a prison camp during the 1998-1999 war. A 2nd defendant,
Isak Musliu, was also acquitted, while the third, Haradin Bala, was
sentenced to 13 years in prison for executing nine prisoners in the
woods in July 1998.
(AP, 12/01/05)
2006 Jan 3, Serb officials
acknowledged that war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic was drawing an army
pension until at least mid-November 2005.
(WSJ, 1/4/06, p.A1)
2006 Jan 19, Dragan Vasiljkovic, a
Serbian-Australian man accused of ordering the torture of Croats during
the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia, was arrested in Sydney.
Authorities said Vasiljkovic trained and commanded a unit of the
Croatian Serb special forces known as the "Kninjas." At the time, the
rebels were engaged in a major campaign of ethnic cleansing, forcing
tens of thousands of local Croats to flee their homes.
(Reuters, 1/20/06)
2006 Jan 21, Kosovo President
Ibrahim Rugova (61), the ethnic Albanian leader and embodiment of the
province's decades-long struggle for independence from Serbia, died of
lung cancer.
(AP, 1/21/06)(Econ, 1/28/06, p.84)
2006 Jan 26, Serbian police
arrested Jovo Djogo, the former chief of security for Bosnian Serb
wartime general Ratko Mladic, over suspicions he is helping the war
crimes fugitive avoid justice. Djogo was a close aide to the Bosnian
Serb political and military leadership from the start of the former
Yugoslav republic's 1992-1995 war.
(AFP, 1/28/06)
2006 Jan 31, UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan offered a grim assessment of Kosovo's progress toward
stability, saying in a report that the region had fallen behind in
efforts to create a multiethnic and democratic society.
(AP, 1/31/06)
2006 Feb 6, John Sawyers,
political director of the British foreign office, told a group of
Kosovo Serbs that the contact group of 5 western countries plus Russia
had decided that Kosovo should have independence.
(Econ, 2/18/06, p.50)
2006 Feb 10, Kosovo lawmakers
elected Fatmir Sejdiu (54), a moderate new president, paving the way
for the start of talks on the province's future status.
(AP, 2/10/06)
2006 Feb 16, Serbia rejected
European Union's guidelines for an independence vote in Montenegro,
increasing tensions within the troubled Balkan state.
(AP, 2/16/06)
2006 Feb 20, UN mediated talks on
the future status of Kosovo opened in Vienna as Serbs and ethnic
Albanians staked out tough positions. The talks produced no agreement
and were scheduled to resume in a month.
(AP, 2/21/06)
2006 Feb 22, Serb security
officials insisted that top war crimes fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic had
been located and that authorities were trying to persuade him to give
himself up.
(AP, 2/22/06)
2006 Feb 27, EU foreign ministers
threatened to freeze talks with Serbia on its membership bid, setting a
March deadline for Belgrade to hand over war crimes fugitive Ratko
Mladic.
(AP, 2/27/06)
2006 Feb 27, In the Netherlands
the International Court of Justice heard arguments by Bosnia accusing
Serbia of genocide, the first time a state has faced trial for
humanity's worst crime.
(AP, 2/27/06)
2006 Mar 1, Kosovo PM Bajram
Kosumi resigned, days after the start of crucial talks on whether the
province will gain full independence or remain part of Serbia.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Mar 2, Kosovo's president,
Fatmir Sejdiu, issued a statement calling on Lt. Gen. Agim Ceku (44), a
former leader of the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, to become
prime minister and form a new government.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Mar 5, Milan Babic (50), the
Serb leader of a rebel republic in Croatia and one of the key figures
in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, committed suicide in prison in the
Netherlands.
(AP, 3/6/06)
2006 Mar 10, Kosovo's parliament
elected Agim Ceku (45), a former ethnic Albanian guerrilla commander,
as the new PM. Ceku said that anything short of independence from
Serbia was "out of the question," but emphasized after his election
that respect for the province's Serb minority would be a priority for
his government.
(AP, 3/10/06)
2006 Mar 11, In the Netherlands
former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic (b.1941), the so-called
"butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes after orchestrating
a decade of bloodshed during his country's breakup, was found dead in
his prison cell. Milosevic spent nearly five years at a UN detention
facility in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague. An autopsy showed that
he died of a heart attack. A Dutch toxicologist said he took
unprescribed pills that neutralized heart medication.
(SFC, 3/13/06, p.A3)(WSJ, 3/14/06, p.A1)(Econ,
3/18/06, p.83)
2006 Mar 17, In Vienna, Austria,
ethnic Albanian and Serbian officials laid out their demands at
UN-mediated talks on the future of Kosovo, one of the most intractable
disputes left over from the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
(AP, 3/17/06)
2006 Mar 18, In Serbia Slobodan
Milosevic's body arrived in his hometown for burial after a farewell
ceremony in Belgrade that drew at least 80,000 admirers in a strong
show of Serb nationalism.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 29, Serbs in northern
Kosovo warned the UN that the province would split in two if the
Albanian majority clinches independence in talks this year.
(Reuters, 3/29/06)
2006 Mar 31, The EU gave Serbia an
extra month to hand over genocide suspect Ratko Mladic or face
suspension of its talks on closer EU ties, after being reassured of
progress in the manhunt.
(AFP, 3/31/06)
2006 Apr 3, Negotiations in Vienna
on the future of Kosovo appeared to founder as UN mediators struggled
to overcome Serb demands for autonomy within the majority Albanian
territory.
(AP, 4/3/06)
2006 Apr 13, The Danube reached
record-high levels in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, flooding fertile
farmland as authorities in southeastern Europe considered ordering
evacuations.
(AP, 4/13/06)
2006 Apr 14, Mahmut Bakalli (70),
Kosovo's communist-era leader, died of throat cancer. He lead the
disputed province's communists in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
stepping down following disagreements with the central body of the
Yugoslav Communist Party over the handling of unrest by ethnic Albanian
students.
(AP, 4/14/06)
2006 Apr 30, Serbia braced for
suspension of EU aid and trade talks as deadline expired for the arrest
of war-crimes fugitive Ratco Mladic.
(WSJ, 5/2/06, p.A1)
2006 May 3, The European Union
suspended aid and trade talks with Serbia after Belgrade failed to
deliver fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
(AP, 5/3/06)
2006 May 23, Serbia's president
said he recognized the results of the independence vote in Montenegro
that will separate the tiny Adriatic republic from its union with
Serbia.
(AP, 5/23/06)
2006 May 29, In Serbia an
explosion ripped through a chemical plant near Belgrade, killing at
least four people and injuring three. Police sealed off the Prva Iskra
chemical factory, which produces explosives as well as toxic
hydrofluoric acid, used as a component for household detergents.
(AP, 5/29/06)
2006 Jun 3, The body of Zoran
Vukojevic, a key witness in the trial of the alleged assassins of
Serbia's first democratic prime minister since World War II, was found
outside Belgrade. Vukojevic, a member of so-called Zemun Clan criminal
group accused of plotting PM Zoran Djindjic's 2003 killing, had
testified in 2004 against his fellow gang members. Police also
discovered the body of another Zemun Clan member, Zoran Povic, in
central Belgrade.
(AP, 6/4/06)
2006 Jun 3, Montenegro's
parliament declared independence from Serbia, forming Europe's newest
country and dissolving the last vestiges of the former Yugoslavia.
(AP, 6/3/06)
2006 Jun 5, Serbian lawmakers
proclaimed their republic a sovereign state after Montenegro decided to
split from a union and dissolve the remnants of what was once
Yugoslavia.
(AP, 6/5/06)
2006 Jun 9, Bosnia's war crimes
court said it would deliver Serb war crimes suspect Dragan Zelenovic to
the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague after he was handed over to
Sarajevo by Russia. Zelenovic, a former policeman, was wanted by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for
atrocities committed against non-Serbs in the eastern Foca region
during the 1992-95 war.
(AP, 6/9/06)
2006 Jun 15, The Serbian
government recognized newly independent Montenegro, and said it would
establish diplomatic ties with its former partner.
(AP, 6/15/06)
2006 Jun 23, In Serbia a popular
Belgrade newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying top war crimes
fugitive General Ratko Mladic had suffered "his third stroke" and was
in grave condition, near death.
(AP, 6/23/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Serbia criminal
charges were filed against 9 people accused of helping UN war crimes
suspect Ratko Mladic evade justice. The 9 were indicted for "hiding and
helping hide Mladic although they knew that he was charged" with war
crimes.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 17, A Serbian court
issued an international arrest warrant for the widow of former
President Slobodan Milosevic, who now lives in Moscow.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 24, Kosovo formally made
its pitch for independence in Vienna, Austria, face-to-face with Serbia
at their 1st top-level talks since NATO bombs drove Serb forces from
the province in 1999.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 31, Serbia’s PM Vojislav
Kostunica said in published remarks that Serbia will reject
independence as a solution for Kosovo and continue to consider the
province part of its territory.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Serbia a panel of
international judges convicted and sentenced Selim Krasniqi and two
other former rebel fighters to 7 years in prison for detaining and
beating fellow ethnic Albanians who allegedly collaborated with Serb
authorities during the 1998 Kosovo war.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Sep 12, Serbia toughened its
stand on Kosovo as parliament decided that a planned new constitution
would refer to the disputed province as an "integral" part of Serbia,
regardless of U.N.-led negotiations on whether to grant it independence.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 30, Serbia's parliament
approved a new constitution declaring UN-run Kosovo part of the Balkan
state despite ongoing negotiations on the breakaway province's future.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Oct 1, A reformist party
pulled out of Serbia's ruling coalition because of the government's
failure to capture war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic, which led to
the suspension of talks on joining the European Union.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Oct 8, The ultranationalist
Radicals, Serbia's strongest party, unanimously re-elected war crimes
defendant Vojislav Seselj as their leader and vowed to protect Serbia's
national interests if they take power. The Radicals top polls with
around 35% support but are not strong enough to form a government alone
and are very short of likely allies.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 28, Serbia began a
weekend referendum on a proposed constitution that reasserts the
nation's claim to the Kosovo region, whose status is under negotiation
at international talks.
(AP, 10/28/06)
2006 Oct 29, Serbia flirted with
political crisis as a referendum to approve its first constitution
since the socialist era of Slobodan Milosevic hovered on the brink of
failure because of voter apathy. Serbia's top leaders said that voters
approved a new constitution reasserting Serbia's claim over the
UN-administered Kosovo province. Serbia's opposition Liberal Party
charged there was "massive fraud" at polling stations in the final
hours of voting, with people allegedly voting several times and without
identification papers.
(AP, 10/29/06)(AP, 10/30/06)
2006 Nov 8, Serbia's parliament
formally adopted a new constitution reasserting Serbia's claim over
Kosovo and ruling out possible independence for the predominantly
ethnic Albanian province.
(AP, 11/8/06)
2006 Nov 10, The UN announced it
would postpone a decision on the future status of Serbia's breakaway
Kosovo province, hours after Serbia said it would hold an early general
election in January.
(AP, 11/10/06)
2006 Nov 29, NATO leaders finished
a two-day summit without agreement on some members' refusal to send
troops into combat in Afghanistan's most dangerous regions. NATO vowed
to give its troubled mission in Afghanistan the "forces, resources and
flexibility needed" to tackle increasingly ferocious Taliban fighters.
Leaders invited Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina to join a
program considered a first step toward eventual membership, but urged
Serbia and Bosnia to fully cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal.
(AP, 11/29/06)(AFP, 11/29/06)
2006 Dec 2, About 30,000 Serbs
protested in front of the United States embassy in defense of Radical
Party leader Vojislav Seselj, now 22 days into a hunger strike at The
Hague's war crimes tribunal.
(AP, 12/2/06)
2006 Dec 8, Vojislav Seselj, a
Serb war crimes suspect, ended his nearly monthlong hunger strike after
UN Yugoslav tribunal judges allowed him to conduct his own defense.
(AP, 12/8/06)
2006 Iain King and Whit Mason
authored “Peace at any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo.” The book
analyzed NATO’s intervention in Kosovo since 1999.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.94)
2006 The Gorani, a Kosovo minority
in the southern Gora region between Albania and Macedonia, saw their
population drop from about 18,000 at the beginning of the war in Kosovo
to some 8,000. The people were mainly Muslims and spoke a language
close to Serbian and Macedonian.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.60)
2006 The US Ohio national guard
began helping in a training program for the Serbian army.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.64)
2007 Jan 21, Serbs voted in
parliamentary elections that could determine whether the troubled
Balkan nation will continue with pro-Western reform or return to its
nationalist past.
(AP, 1/21/07)
2007 Jan 22, Voting results in
Serbia indicated that the ultra-nationalist Radicals won the most votes
in parliamentary elections, but several pro-democratic groups collected
enough seats to form a new government if they can unite. Vojislav
Seselj, the leader of the Radical Party, was on trial before the UN
wars crimes tribunal in The Hague.
(AP, 1/22/07)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.49)
2007 Feb 2, UN envoy Martti
Ahtisaari unveiled his long-awaited plan for Kosovo, a proposal
recommending internationally supervised statehood for the contested
province where separatists fought a bloody war with Serbia in the late
1990s.
(AP, 2/2/07)
2007 Feb 9, The United Nations
agreed to a Serbian request to delay final talks on the fate of
breakaway Kosovo province by a week to give Belgrade time to appoint
delegates.
(Reuters, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 10, UN police in Kosovo
fired teargas and rubber bullets during clashes with ethnic Albanians
protesting against a UN plan on the fate of the breakaway Serbian
province.
(Reuters, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 11, In Kosovo 2
protesters injured the previous day in violent clashes with police died
of their wounds.
(AP, 2/11/07)
2007 Feb 14, Serbia's parliament
overwhelmingly rejected a UN plan that would give virtual independence
to the breakaway province of Kosovo.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2007 Feb 16, In Serbia Slobodan
Milosevic's paramilitary commander, his secret police chief and five
others were convicted of killing four people in an attack against a
prominent opposition leader who survived.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2007 Feb 26, The United Nations'
highest court exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for the mass
slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnia
war, but ruled that it failed to prevent genocide.
(AP, 2/26/07)
2007 Mar 5, Kosovo's former PM
Ramush Haradinaj went on trial in the Netherlands at the UN tribunal on
war crimes charges related to his time as a guerrilla leader in the war
against Serb forces between 1998-99. Haradinaj, a former regional
commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), resigned as prime
minister in 2005 after being indicted for murder, rape and torture
allegedly committed by forces under his command.
(Reuters, 3/5/07)
2007 Mar 10, Serbia called on the
United Nations to reject a Western-backed proposal for the independence
of Kosovo as Serbs and Albanians ended a year of talks in Austria on
the fate of the breakaway province.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Mar 13, In Serbia former
customs chief Mihalj Kertes, a key aide to late President Slobodan
Milosevic, was charged for allegedly siphoning off millions of dollars
of state money.
(AP, 3/17/07)
2007 Mar 26, A report by a special
envoy for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended independence for
Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo, supervised by the international
community.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Apr 5, Kosovo's parliament
overwhelmingly endorsed a UN plan that proposes internationally
supervised independence for the disputed province.
(AP, 4/5/07)
2007 Apr 10, In Serbia 4
paramilitaries seen in a video gunning down Bosnian Muslims near
Srebrenica in 1995 were convicted of war crimes against civilians by
Serbia's War Crimes Court.
(AP, 4/10/07)
2007 May 5, Hundreds of burly
former militiamen from the Balkan wars regrouped outside a church in
central Serbia, promising to fight together as a paramilitary unit once
more if Kosovo breaks away from the government in Belgrade.
(AP, 5/5/07)
2007 May 8, In Serbia an ally of
late President Slobodan Milosevic was elected as the new parliament
speaker, signaling a return of ultranationalists to power in the Balkan
country.
(AP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 12, Russia said that it
could not accept elements of a draft UN resolution on Kosovo worked out
by the US and EU nations, maintaining its strong opposition to a
Western-backed plan for the Serbian province's independence.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 13, A Serbian
ultranationalist resigned as parliament speaker after only five days in
the post, averting immediate fears that the country was returning to
its warmongering past.
(AP, 5/14/07)
2007 May 15, Serbia's parliament
approved a new pro-democracy government, overcoming efforts by
anti-Western ultranationalists to derail the vote and force new
elections.
(AP, 5/16/07)
2007 May 23, In Serbia Slobodan
Milosevic's paramilitary commander and 11 other men were convicted and
sentenced in the assassination of Serbia's first democratically elected
prime minister, Zoran Djindjic.
(AP, 5/23/07)
2007 May 31, Serbia arrested
Zdravko Tolimir, one of six Serb war crimes suspects still at large. He
was picked up in Belgrade and officially arrested in the Serb part of
Bosnia.
(Econ, 6/9/07, p.60)
2007 Jun 5, Serbian authorities
began excavating what appeared to be a mass grave, at an abandoned
quarry on a border zone between Serbia and Kosovo, containing the
bodies of more than 350 Kosovo Albanians. Witnesses reported seeing
four trucks unload bodies in the area of Raska, near the border with
Kosovo in 1999 during a Serbian crackdown. A 3-day search yielded no
human remains.
(AP, 6/5/07)(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 12, In the Netherlands
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted Milan Martic (52), a wartime
leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs, of murder, torture and persecution and
sentenced him to 35 years in prison for a brutal ethnic cleansing
campaign of non-Serbs in Croatia.
(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 17, Authorities in
Montenegro arrested Vlastimir Djordjevic, Serbia's assistant interior
minister and chief of the Public Security Department (1997-2001),
wanted for murder and persecution of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
(AP, 6/17/07)
2007 Jul 11, Serbia rejected a new
US-backed UN draft resolution on Kosovo, saying it would only lead to
the province's independence.
(AP, 7/11/07)
2007 Jul 12, France told Serbia
its EU bid depends on letting Kosovo break away.
(WSJ, 1/13/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 18, Bosnia's war crimes
court acquitted Momcilo Mandic, the most senior ethnic Serb official
indicted by Bosnian authorities, of all charges related to crimes
during the 1992-95 war.
(Reuters, 7/18/07)
2007 Jul 20, Rade Terzic, Serbia's
former state prosecutor, was arrested on suspicion he belonged to a
criminal gang linked to former President Slobodan Milosevic.
(AP, 7/20/07)
2007 Jul 25, The UN governor in
Kosovo called on major powers to set a clear roadmap to the final
status of Serbia's breakaway province, whose independence bid is
blocked by Russia. Serbia warned the US and the EU not to recognize
Kosovo's independence without UN consent, saying that would prompt an
immediate response from Serbian authorities and could destabilize the
region.
(AP, 7/25/07)
2007 Jul 28, Serbian police
arrested Nikola Radosavljevic (38), a man suspected of killing 9 people
and injuring another two in a shooting spree hours earlier in an
eastern Serbian village.
(AP, 7/28/07)
2007 Aug 1, It was reported that
more than 100 Serbian Gypsies have crossed the border illegally into
neighboring Romania in recent days and filed applications for asylum
claiming they were subject to abuse and attacks in Serbia.
(AP, 8/1/07)
2007 Aug 4, Serbian police
exchanged fire with uniformed gunmen in an ethnic Albanian area of
southern Serbia bordering the breakaway Kosovo province. One person was
killed.
(Reuters, 8/5/07)
2007 Aug 17, Serbia said it was
time to return its security forces to Kosovo, a move that could derail
last-ditch talks on the fate of the Albanian-majority territory before
they begin.
(Reuters, 8/17/07)
2007 Aug 30, Kosovo's PM Agim Ceku
vowed to declare independence unilaterally if internationally brokered
talks do not "open a way for us," staking out a tough position as the
latest round of negotiations began in Vienna.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2007 Aug 31, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia will accept a partition of
Serbia's Kosovo province if that is the solution agreed by Belgrade and
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Both Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians
have said they oppose partition but they have shown no sign of reaching
agreement on the central issue of independence for Kosovo.
(Reuters, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 12, Serbia warned the EU
it would not accept any decision on Kosovo taken outside the UN, and
its ally Russia told the US to stop backing Kosovo independence while
talks continue.
(AP, 9/12/07)
2007 Sep 22, Serbian PM Vojislav
Kostunica warned the United States, NATO and Kosovo Albanians they
would be responsible for devastating consequences if they "snatch"
Kosovo and declare it independent.
(AP, 9/22/07)
2007 Sep 24, A powerful blast
ripped through a shopping mall in the center of Pristina, Kosovo's
capital, killing two and injuring 10 others.
(AP, 9/24/07)
2007 Sep 27, A UN tribunal
convicted Mile Mrksic (60), a Serb army officer, of clearing the way
for the torture and killing of 194 Croats seized from a hospital in a
1991 massacre. Veselin Sljivancanin (54), the area's chief security
officer, was sentenced to five years for failing to protect the Croats
from beatings and torture by the local Serb paramilitary forces and
Territorial Defense units. Officer Miroslav Radic (45) was acquitted of
any wrongdoing.
(AP, 9/27/07)(WSJ, 9/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Sep 28, Representatives of
Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians opened the first face-to-face talks on
the future of the breakaway Serbian province with international
mediators in NYC.
(Reuters, 9/28/07)
2007 Oct 7, Serbian police
detained 56 neo-Nazis who defied a ban and demonstrated to demand the
contested province of Kosovo remain part of the Serbia.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 14, Serb and Kosovo
Albanian officials agreed on a new round of talks later this month to
try to break a deadlock over the future of the breakaway Serb province.
(AP, 10/14/07)
2007 Nov 17, Front-runner and
former rebel and Hashim Thaci pledged independence for Kosovo as the
breakaway province voted for a new parliament in an election shunned by
Serbs bitterly opposed to its secession. With most votes counted,
opposition leader Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo led with 35
percent. Kosovo’s Serbs were told to boycott the election. Only 40-45%
of Kosovar Albanians turned up to vote.
(Reuters, 11/17/07)(AP, 11/18/07)(Econ, 11/24/07,
p.58)
2007 Nov 28, Kosovo stood firm in
its demand for independence after 3 days of talks, pushing the issue to
the UN Security Council.
(WSJ, 11/29/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 7, NATO ministers pledged
to keep their KFOR peace force in Kosovo at current strength as the
Serbian province heads towards independence and to make more troops
available as necessary to deal with any violence.
(AP, 12/7/07)
2007 Dec 10, Kosovo Albanian
leaders said they will start immediate talks with Western backers
towards an independence declaration as the EU came closer to unity in
support of the province's drive to secede from Serbia. Thousands of
wildly cheering pro-independence demonstrators marched through
Pristina, as a sense of euphoria swept the breakaway province preparing
to gain statehood early next year.
(AP, 12/10/07)(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 12, The UN Yugoslav war
crimes tribunal at The Hague sentenced former Bosnian Serb general
Dragomir Milosevic (b.1942) to 33 years imprisonment for the shelling
of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, one of the court's toughest
sentences. In 2009 UN judges trimmed the sentence from 33 to 29 years
but upheld his convictions for leading troops who terrorized Sarajevo
with a deadly rain of shells and sniper bullets.
(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 11/12/09)
2007 Dec 14, EU leaders held a
formal meeting in Brussels, where they agreed in principle to send
1,800 policemen, judges and officials to Kosovo. They also agreed to
set up a reflection group to think about challenges facing the EU
between 2020 and 2030.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.87)
2007 Dec 26, Serbia's parliament
overwhelmingly adopted a resolution that threatens to halt the
country's integration into the European Union and cut off diplomatic
ties with Western countries if they recognize Kosovo's independence.
(AP, 12/27/07)
2008 Jan 4, Kosovo's legislators
were sworn in at the first session of a new parliament that is widely
expected to declare independence from Serbia early this year.
(AP, 1/4/08)
2008 Jan 7, Kosovo's rival parties
struck a power-sharing deal to form a government that is expected to
declare independence from Serbia this year.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 9, Hashim Thaci (39), a
former rebel leader, was elected Kosovo's prime minister, vowing that
the province is only weeks away from independence and calling on Serbia
to give up its claim to the territory.
(AP, 1/9/08)
2008 Jan 14, The Serbian
government said has adopted a secret plan to implement "in case of a
unilateral declaration of independence" by Kosovo.
(Reuters, 1/14/08)
2008 Jan 16, Russia warned
Kosovo's leaders that if they declare independence the territory will
never become a member of the UN or other international political
institutions.
(AP, 1/16/08)
2008 Jan 20, Serbia held
presidential elections. A pro-Western and a nationalist candidate faced
off in a closely contested race. The electoral commission, giving
preliminary results after counting 30% of ballots, said that so far
Radical Party leader Tomislav Nikolic had 38% support, while incumbent
Boris Tadic% had 35 percent. Both Tadic and Nikolic reject independence
for Kosovo, but Nikolic, unlike the current president, has promised
tough measures against countries that recognize Kosovo's statehood.
(AP, 1/20/08)
2008 Jan 22, Serbia agreed to a
multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline project as part of an energy deal
with Russia. This would boost Moscow’s control over gas supplies to
Europe.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A4)
2008 Feb 3, Serbs voted in a
knife-edge presidential election that could decide whether their
country turns its back on the West in response to the imminent loss of
the breakaway province of Kosovo. Boris Tadic took 50.5% of votes cast
to beat nationalist Tomislav Nikolic by about 100,000 votes.
(AP, 2/3/08)(Reuters, 2/4/08)
2008 Feb 4, In Serbia Boris Tadic
celebrated his re-election as president by pledging to stay on a
pro-Western course despite nationalist anger over a looming declaration
of independence by Kosovo province.
(AP, 2/4/08)
2008 Feb 4, EU nations gave
preliminary approval to plans to send a 1,800-strong policing and
administration mission to Kosovo to replace the current UN mission.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Serbia's coalition
government was on the verge of collapse over the European Union's plans
to send a mission to Kosovo province.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 13, Vuk Obradovic (61), a
former Yugoslav army general who was one of the opposition leaders who
toppled strongman Slobodan Milosevic, died.
(AP, 2/13/08)
2008 Feb 14, Serbia's government
proclaimed that any unilateral act by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian
leadership to declare independence would be invalid and illegal.
(AP, 2/14/08)
2008 Feb 15, Serbia's newly
re-elected president Boris Tadic pledged at his inauguration that he
would never stop fighting against independence for Kosovo.
(AP, 2/15/08)
2008 Feb 16, The EU gave the final
approval for the deployment of a 1,800-member policing and
administration mission in Kosovo.
(AP, 2/16/08)
2008 Feb 17, Kosovo declared
itself a nation, mounting a historic bid to become an "independent and
democratic state" backed by the US and key European allies but bitterly
contested by Serbia and Russia. Kosovo’s parliament approved a new
flag, a blue background with a yellow map of the Connecticut-sized
province. Russia denounced Kosovo's independence declaration and called
for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, underlining its
opposition.
(AP, 2/17/08)(SFC, 2/18/08, p.A13)
2008 Feb 19, Serbs set off
sporadic explosions and torched checkpoints between Serbia and Kosovo
to protest Kosovo's declaration of independence and international
recognition of the new nation.
(AP, 2/19/08)
2008 Feb 21, In Serbia protesters,
outraged at US support for Kosovo, stormed the US Embassy in Belgrade
and set part of it on fire. Zoran Vujovic (21) died in the fire and 150
people were injured. Police arrested almost 200 rioters involved in the
protests.
(SSFC, 2/24/08, p.A4)(WSJ, 2/25/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 22, Serbs protesting
Kosovo's independence for a fifth straight day Friday attacked UN
police guarding a key bridge in northern Kosovo with stones, glass
bottles and firecrackers.
(AP, 2/22/08)
2008 Feb 23, In northern Kosovo up
to 2,000 Serb protesters chanting "Kosovo is Serbia!" marched through
Kosovska Mitrovica, an ethnically divided town, in a sixth day of
demonstrations against Kosovo's declaration of independence.
(AP, 2/23/08)(SFC, 2/23/08, p.A3)
2008 Feb 25, Up to 2,000 Serb
protesters rallied against Kosovo's independence in the new nation's
tense north, a few setting fire to EU flags in what has become a daily
challenge following the country's secession from Serbia.
(AP, 2/25/08)
2008 Feb 29, Hundreds of Serb
police in Kosovo vowed not to follow the orders of the
Albanian-dominated force after the territory split from Serbia.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Mar 5, The EU urged Serbia to
make clear it saw its future with Europe and laid out incentives on
visas, education and transport to try to boost the bloc's image in the
Balkans.
(AP, 3/5/08)
2008 Mar 6, Serbia's tottering
coalition government voted down a bid by nationalist PM Vojislav
Kostunica to rule out any deal with the EU until it revokes the
independence of Kosovo.
(AP, 3/6/08)
2008 Mar 8, Serbian PM Vojislav
Kostunica announced his resignation, saying his government was no
longer functioning because of disunity in the coalition.
(Reuters, 3/8/08)
2008 Mar 10, The coalition
government of Serbian PM Vojislav Kostunica was formally dissolved,
opening the way for an early parliamentary election.
(AP, 3/10/08)
2008 Mar 11, Serbia and Russia
demanded that the UN administration in Kosovo halt the transfer of
authority to the European Union, calling a handover illegal and
declaring they will never recognize the independence of the Serb
province.
(AP, 3/12/08)
2008 Mar 13, Serbian President
Boris Tadic disbanded parliament and called an early general election
for May 11.
(AP, 3/13/08)
2008 Mar 14, Hundreds of Serbs
stormed a UN courthouse in northern Kosovo, took control of the site,
and raised a Serbian flag.
(WSJ, 3/15/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 17, UN forces pulling
Serb demonstrators from a UN courthouse were attacked by hundreds of
furious protesters who massed outside, setting off an hours-long battle
with rocks, grenades and live ammunition. One UN policeman was killed.
(AP, 3/17/08)(WSJ, 3/19/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 18, Canada formally
recognized the breakaway republic of Kosovo, a decision Serbia said was
a major mistake that could encourage separatists in the province of
Quebec.
(Reuters, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 19, Kosovo independence
was recognized by Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary.
(WSJ, 3/20/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 23, Serbian PM Vojislav
Kostunica accused NATO peacekeepers and UN police of using "snipers and
banned ammunition" to quell a Serb riot against Kosovo's independence.
(AP, 3/23/08)
2008 Mar 25, Director Koichiro
Matsuura said that Visegrad’s Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic bridge, a 16th
century stone bridge over the Drina River that links Bosnia and Serbia,
has been added to UNESCO's World Heritage List. A ceremony in Sarajevo
marked the event.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Apr 29, EU nations signed a
premembership trade-and-aid pact with Serbia to help pro-Western
parties win elections. The deal would only be implemented if Belgrade
fully cooperates with the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal.
(WSJ, 4/30/08, p.A11)
2008 May 11, A divided Serbia
voted in parliamentary a election that gave its people the stark choice
of entering or rebuffing the EU after the trauma of losing Kosovo.
Voting went ahead in Kosovo despite opposition from the UN and Kosovo
Albanians, who see the polls as an illegal attempt by Serbia to
partition the breakaway territory. Boris Tadic claimed victory saying
his bloc had won 39% of the vote.
(AP, 5/11/08)(SFC, 5/12/08, p.A9)
2008 May 12, Serbia's pro-European
alliance sought a coalition deal with smaller parties on to stave off a
challenge from nationalist runners-up who say they too can form a
government after Sunday's parliamentary election. With about 98% of
votes counted, the Democratic Party had 38.75% and the nationalist
Radical Party 29.2%.
(Reuters, 5/12/08)
2008 Jun 11, Serbian police
arrested Stojan Zupljanin (57), a Bosnian Serb police commander during
the 1992-95 civil war, and one of the four remaining war crimes
fugitives wanted by the UN tribunal in the Netherlands.
(AP, 6/11/08)
2008 Jun 19, Serbia's Supreme
Court sentenced Radomir Markovic, late strongman Slobodan Milosevic's
security chief, to 40 years in prison for organizing a deadly attack on
a prominent dissident. He was convicted of trying to kill opposition
leader Vuk Draskovic in October 1999.
(AP, 6/19/08)
2008 Jun 21, Serb authorities
turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief to the Yugoslav war crimes
tribunal in the Netherlands. Stojan Zupljanin was arrested in the town
of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run.
(AP, 6/21/08)
2008 Jul 7, Serbia's parliament
approved a new government that includes a pro-Western group and the
political party of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(AP, 7/8/08)
2008 Jul 11, In Serbia a bus
carrying Polish tourists overturned north of Belgrade, killing six
people and injuring nearly 40.
(AP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 21, Radovan Karadzic
(63), the wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs, was arrested in a Belgrade
suburb. A judge ordered his transfer to the UN war crimes tribunal in
The Hague.
(AP, 7/22/08)
2008 Jul 30, Former Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic sat in a UN jail cell after being flown to the
Netherlands in the dead of night to face charges of genocide against
Muslims and Croats during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
(AP, 7/30/08)
2008 Aug 5, Serbia's war crimes
prosecutor's office indicted Branko Grujic and Branko Popovic in the
1992 killing of about 700 Muslims in eastern Bosnia. The killings took
place near the town of Zvornik on the border with Bosnia.
(AP, 8/5/08)
2008 Aug 20, Serbian publisher
BeoBook said it has withdrawn a controversial book by American writer
Sherry Jones because of protests from the local Islamic community. The
book "Jewel of Medina" is about Aisha, one of the Prophet Muhammad's
wives.
(AP, 8/20/08)
2008 Sep 9, Serbian lawmakers
ratified a pre-membership agreement with the EU and an oil and gas deal
with Russia after months of heated debate over the direction of the
country's policies.
(AP, 9/9/08)
2008 Oct 9, Montenegro and
Macedonia recognized Kosovo's independence, despite opposition from
Serbia, which called the moves by its Balkan neighbors a betrayal and
expelled the Montenegrin ambassador from Belgrade.
(AP, 10/9/08)
2008 Oct 10, Serbia expelled the
Macedonian ambassador, reflecting its fury over the recognition of
Kosovo's independence by its closest neighbors.
(AP, 10/10/08)
2008 Oct 28, In Serbia Miladin
Kovacevic (21) was detained on suspicion that he "inflicted severe
bodily harm" on Bryan Steinhauer during the fight in a bar in upstate
New York last May. Steinhauer (22) only recently emerged from a coma.
(AP, 10/28/08)
2008 Nov 1, Malaysia defended its
recognition of Kosovo as an independent state, a move that caused
Serbia to expel the Southeast Asian nation's ambassador.
(AP, 11/1/08)
2008 Dec 23, Kosovo threatened to
ban products coming from Serbia if Belgrade does not reverse its policy
of blocking goods that carry a customs stamp from its former province.
(AP, 12/23/08)
2008 Dec 26, Serbia arrested 10
former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla fighters suspected of involvement in
killings and abductions in the former Serbian province of Kosovo in
1999.
(AP, 12/26/08)
2008 Dec, Serbia sold its state
oil monopoly NIS to Russia’s Gazprom at a discount. Officials expected
the payoff would be a steady fuel supply. In January gas supplies to
Serbia stopped as Russia halted deliveries via Ukraine.
(SFC, 1/12/09, p.A6)
2008 Carla Del Ponte, a Swiss
prosecutor, authored (with Chuck Sudetic) “Madame Prosecutor:
Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of
Impunity.” It covered her 8 years chasing Balkan war criminals. In 2009
this Italian edition was made available in English.
(Econ, 1/24/09, p.88)
2009 Jan 28, In Serbia the editor
of a popular liberal radio show, critical of Serb nationalism, said
attackers have disrupted the broadcasts of Pescanik (Hourglass) and
hacked into its Web site.
(AP, 1/28/09)
2009 Feb 11, Judges at the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal voted to suspend the trial of
ultranationalist Serb leader Vojislav Seselj after the prosecution said
its case was being undermined by witness intimidation. The decision
came after 71 prosecution witnesses had already been heard and with
only a handful still to testify.
(AP, 2/11/09)
2009 Feb 26, At The Hague UN
judges in the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal acquitted former Serb
President Milan Milutinovic of ordering a deadly campaign of terror by
Serb forces against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. The court convicted five
other senior Serbs and gave them prison sentences of between 15 and 22
years. The marathon trial started July 10, 2006.
(AP, 2/26/09)
2009 Mar 12, Serbia’s war crimes
court convicted 13 Serbs of war crimes for the execution style killings
of some 200 Croats in 1991 during the Balkan conflicts. 7 former
soldiers received the maximum 20-year sentence.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 26, Serbian lawmakers
approved a law against discrimination due to race, religion, gender,
sexual orientation or other factors despite opposition from
conservatives, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, and nationalists.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Apr 23, In Serbia a war
crimes court found four former Serbian policemen guilty of the massacre
of 48 Kosovo Albanians and sentenced them to up to 20 years in prison.
The verdict said the defendants rounded up members of one Kosovo
Albanian family in their village of Suva Reka in March 1999, killing
several men with machine-gun fire before forcing the rest into a pizza
restaurant and throwing hand-grenades at them.
(AP, 4/23/09)
2009 May 22, Serbian authorities
said they will investigate a drug rehab facility sponsored by the
Serbian Orthodox Church after the publication of a video showing one of
the patients being severely beaten with a shovel by Orthodox priest
Branislav Peranovic. On May 27 Peranovic was removed from his job
leading the Crna Reka center in southern Serbia. On May 29 an employee
of the center, shown in another video punching a patient with brass
knuckles, was charged by police.
(AP, 5/22/09)(AP, 5/27/09)
2009 Jun 23, Serbia's war crimes
court convicted Damir Sireta, a Croatian Serb man, for the
execution-style killings in Vukovar of some 200 Croatian prisoners of
war in 1991 during the Balkan conflict. Sireta was sentenced to 20
years in prison.
(AP, 6/23/09)
2009 Jun 26, Serbian prosecutors
filed war crimes charges against 17 former Kosovo guerrillas for the
alleged murder, rape and torture of Serb civilians. The suspects were
charged in connection with the kidnapping of 159 Serbs and the deaths
of at least 51 of them in the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane in the
wake of Kosovo's 1998-99 war.
(AP, 6/26/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Egypt 8 Serb
tourists and 3 Egyptians were killed when a truck on the wrong side of
the road hit their coach head-on along Egypt's Red Sea coast.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Sep 3, In central Serbia a
series of explosions at an underground ammunition factory in Uzice
killed at least seven people and injured 15.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 14, Finance Minister
Diana Dragutinovic said Serbia will have to lay off about one-fifth of
its government employees, 14,000 people, to meet conditions set by the
International Monetary Fund to receive more financial aid. A trade
union representing state employees has already announced strikes if the
layoffs are carried out.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 15, In the Netherlands
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal announced it has approved the early
release from prison of former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic
(79) after she served two-thirds of her 11-year sentence for
persecution.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 23, Four Serbs were
arrested in Novo Brdo, Kosovo, 20 miles east of Pristina, under
suspicion of committing war crimes against Albanian civilians during
the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Oct 20, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev brought a euro1 billion ($1.5 billion) loan to
recession-hit Serbia, as Moscow sought to expand its political and
economic influence in the Balkans with the first-ever visit to Belgrade
by a Russian president.
(AP, 10/20/09)
2009 Oct 22, The Swedish
government approved the early release of former Bosnian Serb President
Biljana Plavsic (79), who was sentenced to 11 years in prison by a war
crimes tribunal. The Justice Ministry says she will be released on Oct
27 after serving two-thirds of her sentence for persecution.
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 27, At The Hague Radovan
Karadzic boycotted his UN trial for a second day while prosecutors
began outlining their genocide case against the former Bosnian Serb
leader.
(AP, 10/27/09)
2009 Nov 5, In the Netherlands the
UN war crimes tribunal decided that former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic will be appointed a lawyer to represent him whenever he fails
to appear in court.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 15, Serbian Orthodox
Church Patriarch Pavle, born as Gojko Stojcevic (1914), died. He had
called for peace and conciliation during the Balkan ethnic conflicts of
the 1990s but failed to openly condemn Serb nationalism.
(AP, 11/15/09)
2009 Dec 13, In Serbia a grimy
three-car train pulled out of Belgrade's railway station on the first
direct trip to Sarajevo in nearly 18 years, restoring a link broken at
the start of ethnic warfare in the former Yugoslavia.
(AP, 12/13/09)
2009 Dec 19, The European Union
opened its borders unrestricted to more than ten million Serbs,
Montenegrins and Macedonians after nearly 20 years, a major boost for
the troubled region's hopes for closer ties with the 27-nation bloc.
(AP, 12/19/09)
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Subject = Serbia
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