Koštunica resigns as DSS party leader

Koštunica resigns as DSS party leader

BELGRADE -- Vojislav Koštunica has stepped down as leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). The party's presidency on Wednesday accepted his resignation.

The former Yugoslav president, who also served as Serbian prime minister for two terms, made the decision after his party failed to cross the five percent election threshold and enter parliament.

Instead, the party Koštunica founded and led since 1992 won 4.24 percent, or 151,677 votes.

"This is a moment when the party will, for the first time, not enter the Serbian parliament. For that reason it is my duty to step down and submit my irrevocable resignation to the post of president of the Democratic Party of Serbia. I have done all I could do for Serbia, and all that it was my duty to do," Koštunica said in a statement for the Beta news agency.

He added that the DSS went to the March 16 parliamentary elections as the only party that had an economic and political program that should have enabled the country to recover and develop, and protect its state and national interests, safeguarding the Serb nation's cultural and spiritual identity.

"By the electoral will of thecitizens that Serb voice, that has at its base our well-known critical stance on EU integrations and the idea of political neutrality, will not be heard in the Serbian parliament. An absolute majority in these elections decided that Serbia should embark on a road that will turn it into a kind of colony of Washington and Brussels, that will jeopardize its freedom," Koštunica stated.

He believes that this will lead to further dismembering of Serbia, higher unemployment, debt-slavery, and a declining economy.

"Almost...