Independence of Kosovo

BELGRADE - Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik said on Saturday the referendum in Crimea was a democratic expression of the people's will, and that RS was observing closely all other similar events in the world.

BELGRADE - Serbia's view concerning the events in Ukraine is known and unchanged, the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated.

BELGRADE - A EULEX team of judges at the Kosovska Mitrovica court of first instance has requested that Oliver Ivanovic's lawyers provide proof of being registered with the Kosovo Bar Association.

Kosovo is our Jerusalem, minister tells Israeli daily

JERUSALEM -- Aleksandar Vulin, minister in charge of Kosovo in Serbia's caretaker government, has said that Kosovo has both economic and strategic significance for Serbia.

But above all, he told the Jerusalem Post in an interview given ahead of last weekend's elections, it is "the soul of the Serb people."

Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci warned against making parallels between Crimea and Kosovo.

PRISTINA - Head of the EULEX Mission in Kosovo-Metohija (KiM) Bernd Borchardt has said that there are no secret indictments in KiM, as the mechanism of secret indictments does not exist in the Kosovo legal system, adding that a democratic society has two basic principles - presumption of innocence and equality before the law.

"Under no circumstances can the cases of Kosovo and Crimea be compared," Prime Minister Thaci told the online magazine Business New Europe.

Referring to Russia’s union with Crimea on March 18, Thaci said the situation could not be compared to Kosovo, "either in its legal, political or historical circumstances.

"Crimea legally declares independence, Kosovo was illegal"

BANJA LUKA -- President of the Serb Republic, RS, Milorad Dodik stated in Banja Luka that "no parallels can be drawn between the situation in Kosovo and that in Crimea."

BANJA LUKA - Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik stated in Banja Luka that no parallels can be drawn between the situation in Kosovo and that in Crimea as Kosovo illegitimately declared independence and violated the UN Charter and the UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the Crimean leadership declared independence based on the “well-known Kosovo precedent”, which was created by the western countries themselves.