Vukovar

Serbia has protested after Vukovar town council on Monday said that signs in Cyrillic, the script of the Serbian minority in Croatia, will no longer be displayed on town institutions, squares and streets.

The receipt of any official note in Cyrillic in Vukovar will also now require a special request and payment of a fee of three euros.

The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs late on Monday sent the strongest protest to Croatia over the decision of the town of Vukovar to change its statute.

Croatia's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday rejected Russian claims that aggressive Croatian nationalism had forced about 30,000 Orthodox believers to switch to the Catholic religion in the last two decades.

BELGRADE - President of the Coalition of Refugee Associations Miodrag Linta condemned on Tuesday Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic's statement that imposing and forcing the use of Cyrillic in Vukovar on signs installed on public institutions is reopening old wounds for the Croats that suffered in that town.

BELGRADE - Serbia welcomes the UN Human Rights Committee's report calling on Croatia to ensure that national minorities can use their own language and script, especially Cyrillic in Vukovar, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said Friday.

UN calls on Croatia to ensure use of Serbian Cyrillic

NEW YORK -- The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Croatia to ensure the right of minorities to use their language and alphabet.

This particularly concerns the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the town of Vukovar.

The UN's highest court on Feb. 3 rejected rival claims of genocide by former foes Croatia and Serbia in landmark rulings over the bloody Balkans wars of the 1990s.

NOVI SAD - Third Serbia called on Croatia on Sunday, requesting release for young Serbs arrested in Vukovar, and appealed the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a request for it to react adequately and address to the EU and UN institutions and ask them to try and exert influence on Croatia.

Croatian law on minorities "not implemented"

BELGRADE -- Croatia's constitutional law on minority rights remains a "dead letter" even though it was adopted 12 years ago.

This is according to Miodrag Linta, president of the Coalition of Refugee Associations in Serbia, and a deputy in the Serbian National Assembly on the ruling SNS party ticket.

BELGRADE - The Appellate Court in Belgrade sentenced Petar Ciric, former member of the Vukovar Territorial Defence, to 15 years in prison for participating in the war crime at the Ovcara farm near Vukovar where a least 193 prisoners of war, members of the Croatian Armed Forces, were tortured and killed on November 21, 1991.