BELGRADE (Reuters) - A major party in the outgoing Serbian government said yesterday it might not back a minority Cabinet, following bitter exchanges with a key partner in the pro-democracy bloc. Boris Tadic, Democratic Party (DS) deputy leader, said his party might also deny support to a Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS)-led minority government if the DSS could not offer a program on how to continue economic reforms started in 2001. “The DSS verbal aggression doesn’t motivate us to give them support... Their statements may indicate that they don’t really want our support, they want an immediate start of a campaign for new elections,” Tadic told a news conference. He spoke hours before his center-left DS was to meet with the center-right DSS, the G17 Plus techocrats and a minor royalist bloc in a new attempt to form a government.

PRISTINA (AP) - NATO’s new secretary-general pledged yesterday that the alliance would remain committed to the province where thousands of troops were deployed to keep the peace after the 1999 war. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who assumed his post as NATO’s top official last week, traveled to Kosovo for a one-day visit to alliance peacekeepers and local leaders. Though NATO now faces post-Sept. 11 pressure to supply peacekeepers elsewhere, such as Afghanistan, de Hoop Scheffer said that “considerable changes in the structure” were not expected in Kosovo. “It might vary, but we will not see considerable changes and not a considerable downsizing,” he said.

The United States has asked the new Croatian government to delay doing business with Libya until Muammar Khadhafy provides serious proof that he is prepared to give up weapons of mass destruction. A statement to that effect was issued yesterday by the US Embassy in Zagreb, a day after a Croatian daily, Jutarnji list, reported that US Ambassador Ralph Frank had asked President Stipe Mesic to postpone the planned repair of a Libyan warship built here decades ago. (AP)

The prime ministers of Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Montenegro met yesterday in Podgorica to discuss ways of boosting cooperation in order to improve their chances of integration with the West. “This meeting has confirmed the interest we have shown in mutual regional cooperation, which is one of the preconditions for the development of the region and its integration into the European and Atlantic fold,” the three leaders said in a statement issued after the meeting. (AFP)

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will travel to Ankara next week for a two-day visit including talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a ministry spokesman said yesterday. (AFP)