Kosovo government

Serbian premier Aleksandar Vucic on Friday blamed Kosovo's leaders for the sharp rise in tensions between Pristina and Belgrade and for the apparent failure of talks in Brussels this week aimed at calming the situation.

"They don't want any agreement," Vucic said of Kosovo's leaders.

Kosovo government officials have yet to explain what they plan to do with the two-metre-high wall that Kosovo Serbs have erected on the northern side of the Ibar river in the divided northern town of Mitrovica.

A resolution issued by the Kosovo parliament on December 23 ordered "the demolition of the illegal wall in the northern part of Mitrovica to happen within January 2017".

Following the sharp rise in tensions between Kosovo and Serbia over the train sent to the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, Dragan Sutanovac, leader of Serbia's opposition Democratic Party, accused Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic of making "warmongering statements" that are "fuelling further conflicts" and bringing Kosovo's small Serb minority into danger.

Kosovo has now been without a Minister of European Integration since September 2016 when the former incumbent, Bekim Collaku, resigned to join the president's office, and the ruling coalition has still not decided who should be appointed to replace him.

BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has cancelled a Christmas Eve visit to Strpce, Kosovo-Metohija, Tanjug has learned.

A source in Nikolic's presidential office told Tanjug Thursday a group of his aides, a so-called "advance team", had practically been ill-treated at the administrative crossing earlier in the day by unfair staff.

Former PM and AAK leader Ramush Haradinaj was detained on Wednesday by police in eastern France on a flight from Pristina on the basis of a Serbian arrest warrant that alleges he committed war crimes while he was a guerrilla commander with the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, during the war in Kosovo.

His family confirmed the arrest on Wednesday to Kosovo's public broadcaster RTK.

Slavko Simic, the head of Lista Srpska, the ethnic Serbian party in Kosovo's coalition government, told Kosovo's public broadcaster late on Thursday that Jevtic had filed her resignation from the position of local government minister.

BELGRADE - Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic on Monday set a December 31 deadline for Kosovo Serb representatives to withdraw all harmful decisions if they want to take part in what is a unified policy of Serbs and Serbia in Kosovo-Metohija, said the head of the government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Marko Djuric.

The head of the Serbian government's Office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric, has angered the Kosovo government by opening three gas selling points for the Serbian company Nis Petrol in Serb-run northern Kosovo in North Mitrovica, Zubin Potok and Zvecan.

PRISTINA - The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has assigned the "geographic area" of Kosovo the +383 dialling code pursuant to the Brussels agreement on telecommunications and a formal letter from Serbia.