Vecernje

Serbian Gendarmerie police will strengthen their patrols in the area of Sremska Mitrovica, in the northern Vojvodina province, as conflicts between locals looking for lucrative and highly prized truffles risk getting out of control, the Interior Ministry said.

Austrian writer Peter Handke, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for literature, confirmed on Thursday evening that he was given a Yugoslav passport in 1999 when the country was under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Thursday that Maria Zakharova will visit the famous festival in the village of Guca, where participants consume huge amounts of grilled meat and strong alcohol and go wild to the sound of Serbian brass bands.

Serbian criminologist Dobrivoje Radovanovic has warned that Serbia must cooperate more effectively with Montenegro and step up its attempts to combat violent crime after another murder of a Montenegrin citizen in Belgrade.

"Better cooperation between Serbia and Montenegro would help," Radovanovic told BIRN. 

After Serbia ignored the advice of the UN Committee Against Torture and extradited Kurdish political activist Cevdet Ayaz to Turkey, activists and experts have accused of Belgrade of disrespecting important human rights bodies.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has declined to rule out early parliamentary elections in 2018 if the opposition "gives good reasons" for holding them them.

"I hear that some are calling for elections, and if they insist, I won't shrink from a fight," Vucic told Milorad Vucelic editor of the newspaper Vecernje novosti in an interview published on Monday.

Serbia has insisted that the arrest warrant that it issued for Ramush Haradinaj in 2004 will remain in force now he is Kosovo's new prime minister, which could cause difficulties while travelling internationally in his new role, experts believe.

Dacic published an article in state-owned newspaper Vecernje novosti on Sunday, suggesting that in order to avoid future conflict over Kosovo, what belongs to Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo should be divided up, although he did not explain what this might mean in practice.

Aleksandar Vucic's article, published on Wednesday in Serbian tabloid Alo, linked the upcoming opening of the new IKEA store to what he described as his own government's success.

"IKEA does not exist where there is no desire to think and work in a new, different way," Vucic wrote in the article.

Jokes have been traded online about the planned installation of the 120-metre-high flagpole at the mouth of the Sava River in Belgrade, where an enormous Serbia flag is expected to be raised early next year.