Vojvodina

Serbian opposition parties have held a joint meeting to plot a common strategy just two days after Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced that elections will be held in spring.

The Prime Minister said national polls would be held longside local and provincial elections in the northern province of Vojvodina but did not specify a date.

Speaking at a meeting the main board of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party on Sunday, its leader, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, said he had decided to call early parliamentary and local elections.

"It is my decision that we are going to have elections, we are going to be victorious," Vucic said, speaking to some 500 members of his party.

Serbia's opposition Democratic Party, DS, says it is facing sustained harassment ahead of important test elections in the province of Vojvodina loosely set for April or May.

December saw the dramatic arrest of 80 people in an anti-corruption swoop, which included several members of the Democratic Party, Aleksandra Jerkov, the party spokesperson and an MP, noted.

Leaders of the two ruling parties in Serbia, Progressive chief Aleksandar Vucic and Socialist leader Ivica Dacic, have vowed not to form a grand coalition ahead of elections in the northern province of Vojvodina, leaving future arrangements to post-election negotiations.

A murder has occurred overnight in front of a restaurant in Bajmok, a town in the province of Vojvodina.

Firearms were used during the incident, Police Administration official Miroljub Kolaric told state broadcaster RTS on Friday morning.

Democratic Party (DS) President Bojan Pajtic has challenged Serbian Prime Minister and SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic to a televised debate.

According to Pajtic - whose party is in opposition at the state level, but in power in the province of Vojvodina - by accepting, Vucic would "show that Serbia is a normal, democratic country, free from media censorship."

In the budget proposal for 2016, the Serbian government has decreased revenues meant for the province of Vojvodina by 40 percent.

This has been announced by the Vojvodina branch of the Democratic Party (DS) - an opposition party on the state level, in power in the province.

Farmers' organisations from the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina and several political parties are asking for the withdrawal of the new legislation because they claim it creates the conditions for corruption and is unfair to small farmers.

Farmers from Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina, headed to Belgrade in their tractors, have been stopped and turned back by the police.

The farmers started from several towns in a bid to reach Belgrade and protest against the proposed changes to the Law on Farming Land.

The Serbian Red Cross has provided assistance for 159,000 refugees from June 10 until October 18, Red Cross President Dragan Radovanovic said on Tuesday.

Of that number, 110,000 were in Presevo, southern Serbia, 35,000 in the province of Vojvodina in the north, and nearly 8,000 in Belgrade, he told RTS.