Well, things are about to get interesting again....

Stalemate in Kosovo talks after Serbia proposal rejected

by Aleksandra NiksicTue Nov 27, 9:03 AM ET

Internationally-sponsored talks over the future status of the Serbian province of Kosovo were deadlocked Tuesday, after Kosovo Albanian leaders rejected Serbia's proposal for self-governance.

Serbian President Boris Tadic listed a series of concessions the government in Belgrade was ready to make, including autonomy in legal, economic and daily affairs, during a meeting between the parties in Baden, outside Vienna.

"Kosovo would be officially self-governing, with the full consent of Belgrade," while Serbia maintains rights over the "province's foreign policy, defence, border control and the protection of Serbian heritage," Tadic told the delegates.

But Skender Hyseni, a spokesman for the Kosovo Albanian delegation, dismissed the proposal, saying Serbia "continued to offer vision and models which basically are a recipe for frozen conflicts... for half-solutions, which do not take neither Kosovo nor Serbia anywhere."

"I'm afraid that nothing spectacular will happen," he said, adding that no agreement would probably be reached during the closed-door gathering, seen as a last-ditch attempt to solve the Kosovo issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071127/wl_afp/kosovoserbiadiplomacy_071127140303

Out of order, but important info on where things stand....

Serbia rejects framework for "independent" Kosovo

Mon Nov 5, 12:36 PM ET

A framework drafted by mediators for the future of Kosovo defines the province's independence from Serbia and is "completely unacceptable," Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Monday.

"The 14 points as they stand now mean a relationship between two independent states," Kostunica told a news conference after a fourth round of talks with leaders of the Kosovo Albanian majority in Vienna.

The mediating trio from the United States, Russia and the European Union insist the points do not prejudice the outcome of talks, but present potential areas of common ground.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071105/wl_nm/serbia_kosovo_kostunica_dc_1

War crimes trial of Serb ultranationalist to start

1 hour, 51 minutes ago

The leader of Serbia's ultranationalist Radical Party faces charges including murder, torture and persecution of non-Serbs when his trial opens at the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Wednesday.

Vojislav Seselj gave himself up to the court in 2003 and pleaded not guilty. He remains leader of the Radicals, Serbia's strongest single party for almost a decade.

The trial is due to start at 3 a.m. EDT. It had been set to begin late last year but Seselj went on hunger strike for 28 days after being prevented from defending himself.

He eventually won back the right to self-defense.

Prosecutors accuse Seselj of making inflammatory speeches calling for the creation of a "Greater Serbia" and inciting hatred of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb people during the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

They say he recruited Serbian volunteers and indoctrinated them with his "extreme ethnic rhetoric" and was involved in plans to forcibly remove the non-Serb population from parts of Croatia and Bosnia with "particular violence and brutality."

Hundreds of non-Serbs were detained, beaten, tortured and killed by Serb forces Seselj recruited or influenced, prosecutors say. He is charged with murder, torture, persecution, cruel treatment, deportation, inhumane acts, wanton destruction and plunder.

In Serbia's capital Belgrade, Seselj's party put up posters of their leader reading "The trial begins -- end Hague tyranny."

The party has arranged for the trial to be shown live by a small, private television station after state television turned down their request to broadcast proceedings.

Party secretary Aleksandar Vucic said the Radicals did not expect a fair trial but were sure Seselj would prove Serbia was not guilty of war crimes.

Seselj, 53, has routinely disrupted pre-trial proceedings by insulting judges and refusing to cooperate with defense lawyers imposed on him by the court whom he called "spies."

He was close to the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died in detention in The Hague in March 2006 a few months before a verdict was due in his war crimes trial.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071106/wl_nm/serbia_seselj_dc_1;_ylt=Am_a0Z51qGGZ2zgaliD8QxIE1vAI