http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080627/wl_afp/serbiapolitics_080627180558
Ex-finance minister Cvetkovic to head new Serbian government 31 minutes ago Outgoing finance minister Mirko Cvetkovic will lead a new Serbian government composed of pro-Europeans and the Socialists of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the presidency announced Friday. "The president of the republic has decided to propose the current finance minister Mirko Cvetkovic for the post of prime minister of the government of Serbia," President Boris Tadic said. Cvetkovic was finance minister in the outgoing nationalist government of Vojislav Kostunica. A trained economist, he has worked for the World Bank in India and Pakistan. Outgoing foreign minister Vuk Jeremic had also been widely tipped for the job. The Tadic-led "For a European Serbia" triumphed in the May 11 elections, taking 102 of the 250 parliament seats. While the ultra-nationalist Radical Party won 78 seats, no party could form a government without the Socialists and their 20 deputies. In a break from its war-tarnished past under Milosevic, the Socialist Party voted Monday to spurn nationalists and instead forge a government with the pro-European camp, dominated by Tadic's Democratic Party. Tadic's statement said the Muslim Sandzak coalition and an ethnic Hungarian party would form the remainder of the coalition. The outgoing Kostunica government, an uneasy year-old coalition of his Democratic Party of Serbia and Tadic's Democrats, fell apart in early March because of a dispute about EU ties after most of the 27-nation bloc recognised the independence of Serbia's ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo province. The Socialists began talks with the pro-European bloc last Saturday, when negotiations broke down Kostunica's DSS and the Radical Party.
