A general view of the opening session of the Serbian government in Belgrade.

Serbia’s pro-Europeans and the socialists of late president Slobodan Milosevic are “very close“ to agreeing on a government after last weekend’s elections, AFP quoted the daily Blic as reporting on Wednesday.
“The deal was all but sealed after two days of talks between Serbian President Boris Tadic, the leader of the Democratic Party which heads the pro-European alliance, and Socialist Party leader Ivica Dacic,“ Blic said.
But it will only be made public later this month, after the results of Sunday’s legislative elections are officially confirmed, the newspaper added, citing what it said were high-ranking sources from both parties.
“The agreement should be announced straight after the publication of the final results of the parliamentary elections, which have been delayed by seven days,“ it quoted one source close to the talks as saying.

Severe Pressures
Blic added that the deal was reached despite Dacic having been exposed to “severe pressures“ from officials close to nationalist caretaker Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, as well as businessmen.
According to Reuters, a draft agreement on the nature and policy goals of Serbia’s new national government was adopted at a meeting that included Kostunica and Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of the Radicals, said Andreja Mladenovic, a party spokesman.
It was the opening move in an elaborate coalition mating dance following Serbia’s inconclusive general election on Sunday, in which voters had essentially been asked to decide whether they wanted to shelve their bid for European Union membership to display defiance over Kosovo’s independence.
Voters boosted the fortunes of political parties that view the European Union favorably, but not by enough to give them a ruling majority. The coalition that emerges in the coming days will probably decide whether Serbia moves closer to the European Union or toward closer ties with Russia.
Kostunica turned against the European Union when it backed the secession of Kosovo, the province with an overwhelming majority of ethnic Albanians, which declared independence in February. He wants Serbia’s bid for membership in the European Union put on hold until the European powers change their minds about supporting Kosovo’s independence.
Nikolic said before the election that he would offer Kostunica the top post in a new coalition. The president of Serbia, Tadic, who is in favor of aligning with Western Europe, broke with Kostunica in February. He said he would never have Kostunica as prime minister again.

Socialist Support
To form a majority government, Nikolic and Kostunica need support from the Socialist Party of Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in 2000 when Kostunica came to power.
Nikolic said he and Kostunica would meet on Wednesday to see if his terms were acceptable to the Socialists.
“If they are, we’ll have a government,“ he told the Beta news agency. “If not, the Radicals will be in opposition.“
But two days after voters gave the Socialists 20 parliamentary seats in the election, which was prompted by the collapse of the Tadic-Kostunica coalition, the Socialists were keeping their options open.
They are also being courted by Tadic’s Democratic Party bloc, which came out on top in the voting on Sunday, earning 39 percent of the vote compared with the Radicals’ 29 percent.
The newspaper ’Politika’ said that if the Socialists backed Tadic, “no one in the West would be able to call them ’the forces of the past’ anymore, while Tadic would benefit from the Socialist image as fighters for social justice.“
Tadic’s Democratic-led Coalition for a European Serbia also said that it had entered coalition talks on Tuesday. It did not say with whom, but in an unmistakable overture to the Socialists, Tadic pledged he would “work for the good of absolutely all citizens, on the principles of social justice, protection of workers’ rights and creation of new jobs.“
In Brussels, Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, said he wanted to see a stable coalition in Serbia that was in favor of strengthening Serbia’s ties with Western Europe. He made it clear that he would not object if the coalition included the Socialists.

Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to an overwhelming but largely symbolic victory in working-class West Virginia, handing Barack Obama one of his worst defeats of the campaign yet scarcely slowing his march toward the Democratic presidential nomination.
But with an almost insurmountable lead in the delegate tally, Obama may be just a few weeks from clinching the party’s nomination before the end of the primary season on June 3 even if he loses most of the remaining contests in four states and Puerto Rico.
According to AP, Clinton showed no signs of being ready to abandon her bid to become the first female US president. She coupled praise for Obama with a pledge to persevere in a campaign in which she has become the decided underdog.
Obama conceded defeat in advance but was looking ahead to the Oregon primary next week and to the general election campaign against Republican John McCain.

Fourteen paramilitary leaders of Colombia will be put on trial in four US states, the US Department of Justice said Tuesday.
The indicted defendants face charges that include “conspiracy to import cocaine, providing material support to a designated terrorist organization; and money laundering,“ read a statement from the Department of Justice.
The defendants, 13 of whom were extradited on Tuesday, will face trial in federal courts in the District of Columbia, central and southern Florida, New York and Texas, the statement said.
According to AFP, many Colombian paramilitary fighters demobilized in recent years to take advantage of a law limiting their prison sentences to eight years and protecting them from extradition if they do so.
But the United States has argued that many paramilitary leaders continued their drug trafficking activity from behind bars.

Lawmakers from newcomers Rwanda and Burundi were sworn in Tuesday as members of the East African Parliament as the regional assembly gathered in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, according to AFP.
Rwanda and Burundi joined the East African Community (EAC) in July 1997, expanding its membership to five and creating a wider market. Initially, the bloc was made up of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, whose MPs took oath in June last year.
Nine representatives from each of the two newcomers took an oath before the East Africa Legislative Assembly, the lawmaking wing of the EAC. Kenyan parliament speaker Kenneth Marande, who chaired the session, urged the 45-member assembly to expedite laws that would speed up members’ ambitions of forming a federation.
The EAC countries plan to hold referenda by September 2009 on adopting a common currency by the end of 2009 and formally creating a federation with a president, cabinet, parliament and Supreme Court by January 2010.

North Korea has taken an “important first step“ toward disclosing its weapons-grade plutonium programs even while slowing down some disablement of its nuclear plants, AFP quoted a US envoy as saying Tuesday.
Sung Kim, head of the US State Department’s North Korea office, said the 18,822 pages of documents in 314 volumes he brought back from Pyongyang should help verify a long-delayed declaration from North Korea on its nuclear activities.
“These are operating and production records for the five-megawatt reactor and the reprocessing plant in Yongbyon,“ Kim told a press conference in Washington, standing next to stacks of some of the documents.
“I do think these documents are an important first step in terms of verifying North Korea’s declaration,“ which has yet to be submitted, Kim said.
He said a team of experts will review the Korean-language documents which still have to be translated.