NOTE TO READERS: RFE/RL announces with regret that due to financial constraints, this will be the last issue of "RFE/RL Newsline." In late June, RFE/RL will launch a redesigned English-language website (http://www.rferl.org) that will continue to cover developments in our broadcast region.
Southeastern Europe
SERBS TO FORM OWN PARLIAMENT IN KOSOVA? One of the leaders of Kosova's ethnic Serb minority, Marko Jaksic, said that Serbs in Kosova will form their own assembly after May 11, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Service reported on May 8. Jaksic said this would be the only way for Serbs to continue living in Kosova. Kosova's ethnic Serbs reject its independence, which was proclaimed on 17 February and has since been recognized by some 40 countries, including the U.S., Canada, and a majority of EU states. May 11 is the day when Serbia's citizens will elect a new parliament and local assemblies, in a race widely seen as a contest between pro-Western reformers and Serbian nationalists, who reject closer ties with the EU because of the bloc's support for Kosova's independence. Jaksic is an ally of Serbia's conservative Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, whose Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) is likely to be the kingmaker in parliament. The legislature is expected to be evenly split between the pro-Western Democratic Party (DS) of President Boris Tadic and the nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) of Tomislav Nikolic. TV
BOSNIA LOCAL ELECTION SET FOR OCTOBER 5 The Central Election Commission of Bosnia-Herzegovina has set October 5 as the date for the country's next local elections, local and international media reported on May 8. Bosnia's parliament recently amended the election law to allow pre-war residents of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica to choose whether to vote there or in the municipality where they currently reside, in a move aimed at preventing an election win by a majority Serb local government. Srebrenica, which today belongs to the Republika Srpska, one of Bosnia's two entities, was the scene of the single worst atrocity of the 1992-95 war, when Bosnian Serb as well as Serbian forces killed thousands of Muslim men and boys. The International Court of Justice ruled in early 2007 that the event constituted an instance of genocide (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 27, 2007). Several thousand ethnic Muslims have returned to Srebrenica since the end of the war, but an estimated 25,000 former residents live elsewhere in the country or abroad. TV
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