Timeline Serbia 2000-2012
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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 Jul, In Serbia’s Vojvodina
province the Exit music festival was started by three University
students from Novi Sad.
(www.southeast-europe.eu/index.php?id=780)
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 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)
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)
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)
2002 The Serbian economy showed
signs of recovery after 13 years of Milosevic's mismanagement and
the end of international sanctions imposed to stop Milosevic from
waging war on his neighbors. The national currency, the dinar, has
been relatively stable since Milosevic's ouster. Authorities have
launched reforms in hopes of joining the European Union.
(AP, 9/29/02)
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. In 2007 Vladimir Milisavljevic
was convicted and sentenced in absentia in Serbia to 35 years for
his involvement in the assassination. On Feb 9, 2012, Spanish police
arrested three men, including Milisavljevic, who had been a fugitive
for five years after being convicted for the assassination of PM
Djindjic.
(SFC, 4/9/03, p.A7)(AP, 2/10/12)
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. In 2010 prosecutors filed assault charges against
Kovacevic.
(AP, 10/28/08)(AP, 3/2/10)
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)
2008 Serbian military exports
this year were worth about $200 million. This amount was doubled in
2010.
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.51)
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 17, Serbian men
brutally attacked Brice Taton (28), a French soccer fan, in front of
a downtown cafe in the Serbian capital before Partizan Belgrade's
Europa Cup match against Toulouse. On Jan 25 a Belgrade court
convicted 14 Serbs of the fatal beating of Taton. Two of the
convicted remain at large and were tried in absentia.
(AP, 1/25/11)
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 Nov 30, The EU Council of
Ministers for Interior and Justice abolished visa requirements for
citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#Current)
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)
2009 Dec 23, Italian carmaker
Fiat became a majority owner of Serbian car manufacturer Zastava
with a 67% stake.
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.39)(http://tinyurl.com/yd2lccd)
2009 Dec, Police in Uruguay
seized a large amount of cocaine from an anchored yacht as part of
an operation dubbed “Balkan Warrior.” 2.7 tons were seized in the
operation. In 2010 Serbia indicted Darko Saric, a Serb citizen from
Montenegro, and 19 associates of smuggling drugs from South America
to Europe. Saric disappeared but financial documents linked him to
companies registered in the Marshall Islands and Delaware via the
Bank of Cyprus and an Austrian bank in Montenegro, a branch of Hypo
Group Alpe-Adria.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.56)(Econ, 9/11/10, p.63)
2010 Jan 3, Serbian police
arrested Darko Jankovic, a war crimes suspect. He was wanted for the
killing of at least 19 civilians in eastern Bosnia and other
atrocities of the 1992-95 war.
(AP, 1/3/10)
2010 Jan 4, Serbia filed a
lawsuit against Croatia at the International Court of Justice,
accusing it of genocide during the 1991-1995 Balkan war, which
killed or displaced thousands of people.
(AP, 1/5/10)
2010 Jan 22, In Serbia Irinej
Gavrilovic, a moderate who recently called for better ties with the
Roman Catholics, was chosen as the new head of the influential
Serbian Orthodox Church.
(AP, 1/22/10)
2010 Mar 3, A British judge
ordered former Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic held in custody
despite a request to release him while he challenges a Serbian
demand that he be extradited for alleged war crimes. Ganic was
arrested March 1 at Heathrow Airport after Serbia issued an arrest
warrant accusing him of war crimes in connection with the 1992
deaths of Serbian troops in Bosnia.
(AP, 3/3/10)
2010 Mar 12, Serbian police
detained nine former paramilitary fighters suspected of killing
civilians and looting homes during the Kosovo war. The nine were
accused of killing 41 ethnic Albanian civilians in the village of
Cuska in May 1999.
(AP, 3/13/10)
2010 Mar 30, Serbia's
parliament approved a declaration condemning the 1995 Serb massacre
of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, in a bid to distance the country
from past warmongering under the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(AP, 3/30/10)
2010 Apr 20, In Serbia Biljana
Kovacevic Vuco (58), one of Serbia's most prominent human rights
activists, died. She played an important role in Serbia's fledgling
human rights and anti-war movement during the 1990s rule of late
strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 May 10, Serbian war crimes
prosecutors said a mass grave has been discovered in Serbia believed
to contain the bodies of 250 ethnic Albanians who were killed in
Kosovo during the 1998-99 Serbian crackdown on separatists.
(AP, 5/10/10)(SFC, 5/11/10, p.A2)
2010 May 30, In Kosovo riot
police used tear gas and pepper spray to separate hundreds of ethnic
Albanian protesters and Serbs voting in local Serbian elections in
the tensely divided town of Mitrovica.
(AP, 5/30/10)
2010 May, Serbia and Croatia
announced plans for a regional center to fight organized crime.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.54)
2010 Jun 8, Serbia and Croatia
signed a defense co-operation agreement.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.54)
2010 Jun 10, Serbia's police
caught Milos Simovic (31), a fugitive convicted of taking part in
the assassination of Serbia's PM Zoran Djindjic seven years ago.
(AP, 6/10/10)
2010 Jun 10, Two Bosnian Serbs,
Vujadin Popovic and Ljubisa Beara, were convicted of genocide and
sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1995 massacre of some 8,000
Muslims in Srebrenica, the harshest judgment ever delivered by the
UN war crimes tribunal on the Balkan wars. It was a dramatic
conclusion to the largest trial conducted by the tribunal.
(AP, 6/10/10)
2010 Jul 2, In Kosovo an
explosion tore through a Serb protest in Mitrovica fatally injuring
one man and leaving 11 others with shrapnel wounds.
(SFC, 7/2/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 9, Prosecutors at the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague cited Ratko Mladic's
diaries, seized in a raid on his wife's Belgrade home in February,
in a motion to reopen the trial of former Bosnian Croat political
leader Jadranko Prlic and five other political and military Croat
officials that ended two months ago.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 22, The UN's highest
court said that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in
2008 did not break international law.
(AP, 7/22/10)
2010 Jul 27, Serb lawmakers
passed a resolution vowing that their country will never recognize
Kosovo as an independent state, despite a UN court ruling backing
the independence declaration by the former Serbian province.
(AP, 7/27/10)
2010 Sep 2, Serbia's justice
minister said authorities have confiscated euro200 million ($256
million) in property from organized crime bosses since gaining the
authority last year.
(AP, 9/2/10)
2010 Sep 11, Serbia’s war
crimes prosecutors' office said it has indicted nine
ex-paramilitaries over the killing of 43 ethnic Albanians during the
1998-99 Kosovo conflict. The men who served with a paramilitary unit
known as The Jackals were indicted for the killing of the ethnic
Albanian civilians in the Kosovo village of Cuska on May 14, 1999.
(Reuters, 9/11/10)
2010 Sep 12, In Kosovo a French
Gendarme was shot and wounded during clashes between ethnic
Albanians and Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica as
European Union police fired tear gas to disperse the violent crowd.
(AP, 9/12/10)
2010 Sep 27, In Serbia
basketball player Miladin Kovacevic (23) pleaded guilty to beating a
fellow American student into a coma in the case that has strained
relations between the United States and Serbia. In November he was
sentenced to two years and three months for the beating of Bryan
Steinhauer (24) in May 2008 near Binghamton University in upstate
New York.
(AP, 9/27/10)(AP, 1/21/11)
2010 Oct 3, Thousands of Serb
pilgrims gathered in a medieval monastery in western Kosovo amid
tight security to attend the enthronement ceremony of the new
Serbian Patriarch Irinej.
(AP, 10/3/10)
2010 Oct 10, In Serbia a gay
rights parade in Belgrade descended into violence as thousands of
police deployed to protect marchers clashed with gangs of anti-gay
protesters, sparking riots, injuries and dozens of arrests.
(Reuters, 10/10/10)
2010 Oct 26, Authorities in
Bosnia and Serbia said they had recovered the skeletal remains of at
least 97 people from the banks of a border lake that was partially
drained this summer for maintenance. Most were killed by Serbs in
the nearby town of Visegrad at the start of the 1992-1995 Bosnian
War. But on the Serbian side experts found the remains of what they
presume to be 11 Albanians killed during the Kosovo war in
1998-1999.
(AP, 10/26/10)
2010 Nov 3, Serbia declared a
state of emergency in the area around Kraljevo after a 5.3
earthquake rattled its central region, killing at least two people
and injuring 50 others.
(AP, 11/3/10)
2010 Nov 4, Serbian President
Boris Tadic apologized at the Ovcara site near Vukovar of the 1991
bloody massacre of more than 200 Croats, offering the strongest
condemnation yet by a Serbian leader of Serb wartime atrocities.
(AP, 11/4/10)
2010 Nov 11, In Serbia a law
restricting smoking went into effect. Cafes and restaurants were
required to provide nonsmoking areas. Smoking was banned in offices
and public areas.
(SFC, 11/12/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 26, Serbia sent a
formal request for the extradition of Peter Egner (88), a
naturalized American citizen who is suspected of serving in a Nazi
unit that killed some 17,000 Jewish and other civilians here during
World War II. Egner was born in Yugoslavia and emigrated to the
United States in 1960, gaining American citizenship six years later.
(AP, 11/26/10)
2010 Dec 2, Heavy snow caused
travel chaos across much of northern Europe, keeping London's
Gatwick airport closed for a second day and disrupting road and rail
travel in France, Germany and Switzerland. Freezing temperatures and
often blinding snowfall killed 12 people, 10 in Poland and 2 in
Germany. Poland had already reported 8 dead due to the cold. Some of
the worst floods in a century devastated parts of the Balkans.
Authorities declared a state of emergency in Bosnia, Serbia and
Montenegro.
(Reuters, 12/2/10)(AP, 12/2/10)
2010 Dec 3, Authorities in
Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro declared a state of emergency and
evacuated hundreds of people after heavy rainfall caused severe
flooding along the Drina River, the worst in 104 years.
(AP, 12/3/10)
2010 Dec 8, Serbia's decision
to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring imprisoned
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo triggered criticism from human rights
activists and the EU, which expressed shock that the candidate for
EU entry would meet China's demands. Serbia feared its attendance
could anger China, which has supported Belgrade in opposing the 2008
independence declaration of its former province of Kosovo.
(AP, 12/8/10)
2010 Dec 10, A Serbian court
acquitted 10 men charged with helping Ratko Mladic, Europe's most
wanted fugitive, evade arrest on genocide charges before a UN war
crimes court.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 10, Serbia reversed
its boycott of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring imprisoned
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo after facing sharp criticism from the
EU and human rights activists at home.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 20, Serbia urged
international authorities to investigate allegations of a trade in
the kidneys and other organs of civilians slain in the aftermath of
Kosovo's 1999 war for secession.
(AP, 12/20/10)
2010 Dec 22, The UN nuclear
agency said tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from a defunct
Serbian reactor have been repatriated to Russia. The 2.5 metric tons
(2.76 tons) of the spent fuel arrived at a secure Russian facility
from Serbia's Vinca reactor.
(AP, 12/22/10)
2010 Dec 27, In Serbia a series
of explosions damaged the Sloboda ammunition factory in Cacak.
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.51)
2010 Serbia’s population was
about 7.3 million.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.56)
2011 Feb 5, In Serbia tens of
thousands of nationalist supporters rallied against the pro-Western
government, demanding early elections amid a deepening economic
crisis.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 14, Serbia's PM Mirko
Cvetkovic said he is sacking Deputy PM Mladjan Dinkic, a key
coalition partner. If Dinkic's G-17 party stops supporting
Cvetkovic's government in Parliament, the coalition will fall apart
and early parliamentary elections will have to be held.
(AP, 2/14/11)
2011 Feb 22, Serb nationalist
Vojislav Seselj deliberately revealed the names of 11 witnesses
whose identities were being shielded by the Yugoslav war crimes
tribunal at the start of his contempt of court trial. Seselj has
been in custody at the tribunal for eight years since turning
himself in to face charges of plotting ethnic cleansing and inciting
atrocities by Serb forces in Bosnia and Croatia as the former
Yugoslavia crumbled in the 1990s.
(AP, 2/22/11)
2011 Feb 23, The UN Yugoslav
war crimes tribunal in the Hague sentenced Vlastimir Djordjevic (62)
to 27 years in prison after pronouncing him guilty of murdering at
least 724 Kosovo Albanians, as well as committing inhumane acts,
persecution and deportations.
(AP, 2/23/11)
2011 Mar 3, Austria detained
Serbian colonel Jovan Divjak (73) on a Serbian warrant. He had
defected to Bosnia's army at the start of the conflict between the
two sides. Divjak awaited a hearing on whether he should be
extradited on suspicion of war crimes.
(AP, 3/4/11)
2011 Mar 19, In Serbia
thousands of anti-government protesters rallied in the central town
of Cacak to demand the government call early elections over the deep
economic crisis.
(AP, 3/19/11)
2011 Apr 7, Amnesty
International urged Serbian authorities to "take urgent and
immediate action" to halt forced evictions of Roma, also known as
Gypsies, from their settlements in the capital Belgrade and prevent
"systematic discrimination" against them.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 16, In Serbia tens of
thousands of nationalist supporters demanded the pro-Western
government call early elections in Serbia at a rally, as their
leader announced he was launching a hunger strike until the request
is met. Tomislav Nikolic ended his hunger strike on April 24.
(AP, 4/16/11)(AP, 4/24/11)
2011 May 6, Brazilian federal
police confirmed that 16 suspected members of a Serbian gang were
arrested between May1-5 across the country. The crackdown concluded
a two-year operation that resulted in 35 arrests, the seizure of
1,370 pounds (620 kilograms) of cocaine and the equivalent of $1.2
million.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 9, Serbia’s High Court
ruled that folksinger Svetlana Raznatovic known as Ceca will spend
one year under house arrest in exchange for a euro1.5-million
($2.2-million) fine. Raznatovic pleaded guilty on charges that she
embezzled about euro4 million in the sale of 10 football players to
foreign clubs from a Belgrade team she managed in the early 2000s.
(AP, 5/9/11)
2011 May 26, Bosnian Serb
wartime general Ratko Mladic (69) was arrested in Serbia after years
on the run from international genocide charges, opening the way for
the once-pariah state to seek membership in the European Union.
(Reuters, 5/26/11)
2011 May 29, In Serbia several
thousand nationalist supporters of war-crimes suspect Ratko Mladic
clashed with riot police in Belgrade.
(SFC, 5/30/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 2, Serbian farmers
blocked roads throughout a northern province demanding higher
subsidies from the government. The protests started earlier this
week, and have gradually built up. Farmers were angry that the
government has kept subsidies at about euro140 ($200) per hectare
and limited the supported land to 10 hectares (25 acres).
(AP, 6/2/11)
2011 Jul 2, Kosovo and Serbia
agreed to a deal on recognizing car license plates, identity cards
and university diplomas.
(Econ, 7/9/11, p.50)
2011 Jul 20, Serbia arrested
Goran Hadzic (52), the last major war crimes suspect from the 1990s
Yugoslav conflicts, closing what its president called a "burdensome"
page in the country's history. The Croatian Serb wartime leader had
been indicted in 2004 for crimes against humanity during the 1991-95
Croatian war.
(Reuters, 7/20/11)
2011 Jul 25, Kosovo’s
government sent special police units to the Serb-inhabited north to
seize two border points which had been beyond its control since
independence.
{Kosovo, Serbia}
(Econ, 8/6/11, p.43)
2011 Jul 26, Kosovo's special
police forces, that moved into the country's disputed north
overnight to extend the government's writ at borders with Serbia,
will withdraw as part of a deal between Kosovo and Serbia and
mediated by NATO.
(AP, 7/26/11)
2011 Jul 27, In Kosovo some 200
Serbs attacked police outposts on the border with Serbia, setting
one of them on fire and killing Kosovo policeman Enver Zymberi. As
the masked Serbs attacked, European Union police on the scene leaped
into their cars and fled the area. In late August EU special police
launched an operation related to a criminal investigation of the
attack.
(AP, 7/28/11)(AP, 8/31/11)
2011 Jul 28, In Kosovo American
and French peacekeepers under NATO took control of two customs posts
on the northern border with Serbia after they were attacked by Serbs
armed with firebombs.
(AP, 7/28/11)
2011 Jul 29, NATO forces in
Kosovo withdrew from a barricade put up by hundreds of Serbs on
Friday to avoid confrontation with Serb extremists blocking the
peacekeepers from reaching a base in the Serb-run north.
(AP, 7/29/11)
2011 Jul 29, An Austrian court
rejected an extradition request from Serbia for Jovan Divjak, a
former general in the Bosniak army, ruling that his right to a fair
trial on suspicion of war crimes would be in doubt.
(AP, 7/29/11)
2011 Jul 31, Serbia's
parliament, after a heated 10-hour debate, passed a resolution
calling for a peaceful resolution of the nation's worst crisis with
Kosovo since the province declared independence three years go.
(AP, 7/31/11)
2011 Aug 1, NATO sent reserve
forces to Kosovo and removed roadblocks put up by Serbs in Kosovo's
north, but barricades still remain following a week of violence that
left one Kosovo policeman dead.
(AP, 8/1/11)(AP, 8/2/11)
2011 Sep 6, At the Hague,
Netherlands, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal sentenced Gen. Momcilo
Perisic, the former chief of the Yugoslav army, to 27 years
imprisonment for providing crucial military aid to Bosnian Serb
forces responsible for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and for a deadly
four-year campaign of shelling and sniping in Sarajevo.
(AP, 9/6/11)
2011 Sep 16, The EU said
helicopters are being used to ferry staff and supplies to border
crossings in the north after minority Serbs blocked main roads in
anger over Kosovo's efforts to take over customs posts. Both
northern crossings remained closed for commercial goods, but
Kosovo's trade minister Mimoza Kusari said Serbian goods started
entering Kosovo's eastern border with Serbia minutes after the EU
mission took over control.
(AP, 9/16/11)
2011 Sep 27, NATO troops shot
at Serb protesters after the military alliance's troops were
attacked near Kosovo's border with Serbia.
(AP, 9/27/11)
2011 Oct 2, Serbia's police
detained six people and prevented a gathering of a pro-Russian
far-right group that threatened to burn an EU flag and spit on the
portrait of the US ambassador in Belgrade. Riot police were deployed
in large number across Belgrade to enforce a ban on a gay pride
event and anti-gay protests, fearing they would turn violent.
(AP, 10/2/11)
2011 Oct 12, Serbia received
European Union notice for recommendation to become an official EU
candidate. The recommendation must formally be approved by the EU's
Council of Ministers on Dec 9. A date to begin formal accession
talks depended on the country and neighboring Kosovo to improve
relations.
(AP, 10/12/11)(AP, 10/15/11)
2011 Oct 19, Kosovo Serb
leaders, defying a NATO warning, refused to unconditionally lift
their roadblocks in the north of the country. A day earlier the
5,500-strong NATO-led force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, said it will
take unspecified "resolute" action if the Serbs fail to lift the
blockade.
(AP, 10/19/11)
2011 Oct 20, Kosovo's NATO-led
peacekeepers confronted crowds of angry Serbs as they tried to
remove Serb roadblocks in the volatile north of the country.
(AP, 10/20/11)
2011 Oct 22, NATO-led
peacekeepers tried to remove roadblocks in northern Kosovo, but were
prevented by Serbs guarding the blockade that has paralyzed travel
in the tense region.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 28, In Bosnia Mevlid
Jasarevic, a man from the Muslim-dominated region of Serbia, fired
with an automatic weapon outside the US Embassy in what authorities
called a terrorist attack. Police in southern Serbia soon detained
15 people suspected of belonging to an extremist Islamic sect.
(AP, 10/29/11)
2011 Nov 7, Officials from
Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, announced plans for a
donors' conference to be held next year and raise the money needed
to implement a five-year plan designed to close down all migrant
centers and provide housing for some 74,000 people.
(AP, 11/7/11)
2011 Nov 22, Serbian police
arrested 17 people suspected of trafficking hundreds of illegal
immigrants from Africa and Asia toward western Europe. Border
officials found 12 illegal migrants attempting to cross into Serbia
from Macedonia.
(AP, 11/22/11)
2011 Dec 2, Kosovo and Serbia
agreed on normalizing border procedures, one of the thorniest issues
in current talks between the two rivals. An EU statement said, "The
parties will gradually set up the joint, integrated, single and
secure posts at all their common crossing points."
(AP, 12/3/11)
2011 Dec 13, A convoy of 25
Russian trucks was stopped by US soldiers guarding the Kosovo border
with Serbia, increasing tensions in the volatile region.
Peacekeepers said the convoy's cargo consisting of canned food,
blankets, tents and power generators looked to be intended for those
manning the roadblocks, and not for the general Kosovo Serb
population. EU officials in Kosovo said the Russians can pass if
they allow an international police escort. Three EU police vehicles
escorted the convoy on Dec 16 after taking a roundabout way through
Serbia to bypass roadblocks.
(AP, 12/14/11)(AP, 12/17/11)
2012 Jan 24, A respected human
rights group, the Humanitarian Law Center, accused Serbia's new army
chief of staff, Gen. Ljubisa Dikovic, of war crimes against
civilians in Kosovo during the 1998-99 war, but officials denied the
claim.
(AP, 1/24/12)
2012 Feb 2, At least 11,000
villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia's
mountains, as the death toll from Eastern Europe's weeklong deep
freeze rose to 122, many of them homeless people.
(AP, 2/2/12)
2012 Feb 9, Spanish police
arrested 3 members of the Serbian paramilitary group known as
"Arkan's Tigers" as well as belonging to Zemun Clan. They included
Vladimir Milisavljevic, who had been a fugitive for five years after
being convicted in absentia for the March 12, 2003, assassination of
Serbia’s PM Zoran Djindjic. Milisavljevic was convicted in 2007 and
sentenced in absentia in Serbia to 35 years for his involvement in
the assassination of Djindjic and to another 40 years for other
crimes. Luka Bojovic (39) and Sinisa Petric were also arrested.
Bojovic was wanted in connection with 20 murders in Serbia, the
Netherlands and Spain.
(AP, 2/10/12)
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End of file.