The Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, resigned on Saturday, dissolving a coalition too divided over the loss of Kosovo to carry on governing.
   Kostunica said he would recommend an election in May, to allow voters to decide the way forward.
   Serbia’s fragile economy has already been hit by the political uncertainty. The volatile stock exchange has fallen and the dinar currency has lost 6 per cent since January.
   ‘A government that has no united policy cannot function, of course, and this is the end of the government.’ Kostunica told a news conference. ‘That means that we have to give the mandate back to the people.’
   His announcement was the climax to a tortuous political struggle over a fundamental question that now faces Serb voters: should they go on working to join the European Union even though the EU has recognised the secession of their cherished province.
   Nationalist Kostunica says ‘No’. His erstwhile main coalition partner president, Boris Tadic, says ‘Yes’. The strains between them reached breaking point three weeks ago after Kosovo declared independence and Belgrade was hit by anti-Western rioting.
   ‘I have called a government session on March 10 to discuss dissolution of parliament,’ he said, adding that he would propose scheduling a general election for May 11.
   Kostunica, 63, took the helm of the 10-month old government last May only after protracted coalition talks with Tadic.
   ‘I respect the prime minister’s decision that he is no longer able to lead the government of Serbia and when I get the government’s decision, I will call an election,’ said Tadic, the 50-year-old leader of the pro-Western Democratic Party.
   ‘Elections are the democratic way to overcome political crises and the people are the only ones who have right to decide which is the way forward for Serbia.’
   Kostunica gave no clue on Saturday to whether his small nationalist party would now seek an alliance with the hardline nationalist Radical Party – Serbia’s biggest – and the smaller Socialist Party of the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.
   Such a coalition would be likely to adopt an unyielding position on Kosovo. The parties favour shutting down Serbia’s bid for EU membership and possibly turning to Russia, which has strongly backed Kostunica’s stance on Kosovo.
   Kostunica said no party was against joining the EU but the question was ‘Should Serbia enter the EU with or without Kosovo?.’ For him the answer was clear: ‘Kosovo is Serbia, and Serbia can only enter the EU with Kosovo.’
   Western powers say their recognition of the February 17 independence declaration by Kosovo’s 90 per cent ethnic Albanian majority is irreversible.
   Whatever their views in private, no major Serbian leader feels able publicly to give up on Kosovo. It is not clear whether Kostunica genuinely expects the United States and EU allies to reverse course, or has some other objective.
   Belgrade is now implementing what the EU sees as an attempt to hobble Kosovo’s government by urging minority Serbs to ignore it and partitioning the Serb-run north, where mobs set fire to two customs posts last month, forcing UN police to flee.
   The border posts are now manned by NATO troops.
   In Kosovo, Serb history goes back to medieval times. But it has been under United Nations and NATO control since the Western alliance bombed Serbia in 1999 to force Milosevic to withdraw his forces and end a bloody ethnic cleansing drive.
   Russia has blocked Kosovo’s independence at the UN but the EU, backed by Washington, is going ahead with a 2,000-strong mission to the new republic to supervise its first couple of years – a mission Serbia says has no legal basis.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has approved the construction of hundreds of new housing units at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, the housing ministry said on Sunday.
   ‘After a series of consultations with the prime minister, the housing minister, Zeev Boim, has approved the relaunching of construction in Givat Zeev,’ the ministry said in a statement.
   The move was swiftly denounced as hampering efforts to advance faltering peace talks that Israelis and Palestinians revived to much fanfare under US stewardship in late November, but that have been stagnant since. ‘We condemn in the harshest terms this decision,’ senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.
   ‘We consider that with this decision, Israel wants to demolish the peace process and demolish the international efforts to advance the peace process,’ he said.
   ‘We ask the American administration to... pressure Israel to reverse this decision.’ The head of Israel’s main anti-settlement group Peace Now, Yariv Oppenheimer, echoed the sentiment.
   ‘This is a scandalous decision that will affect the negotiations with the Palestinians,’ he said. ‘This government, which has pledged to dismantle settlements, has done nothing but reinforce them.’

Iran on Sunday told the West it would only hold talks over its disputed nuclear programme if world powers stopped threatening further punitive measures against Tehran.
   ‘The time of using the policy of the carrot and the stick has ended,’ Javad Vaeedi, a top national security official, said on the sidelines of a security conference in Tehran.
   ‘If they (the West) want to have serious negotiations, in fair conditions and taking into account the interests of the two parties, they must first stop threatening.’
   His comments came a week after the UN Security Council tightened sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to heed the world body’s calls to freeze uranium enrichment, a potential weapons-making process.
   Following the sanctions resolution, the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rejected any new talks with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana – who has represented world powers in past discussions on the nuclear crisis.
   Ahmadinejad said Tehran would in future negotiate only with the UN atomic agency and would not sit down with anyone from outside the body, such as Solana, who has held two years of nuclear talks with Iran.

Authorities in Sri Lanka have detained five mostly ethnic minority Tamil journalists, a media activist group said Sunday, days after Colombo came in for intense criticism over its rights record.
   Five journalists, all linked to a liberal news web site, outreachsl.com, were taken in for questioning over the weekend while some have been detained under tough emergency laws, the Free Media Movement said.
   ‘We hope that due process will be followed regarding the arrested writers and journalists,’ the FMM said, expressing its concern over the latest government crackdown against journalists.
   FMM official Sunanda Deshapriya said his group’s spokesman, Tamil journalist S Sivakumar, had also been detained for 12 hours and later freed by the police Terrorist Investigation Division.
   International media rights activists have described Sri Lanka as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists due to a worsening climate of violence and unofficial censorship.
   Killings and attacks against journalists remained unsolved leading to fears that media freedom is being deliberately and violently suppressed through threats, abductions and attacks, a team of media activists said last year.
   Since August 2005, 11 media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka. Ten of them were killed in government-controlled areas and no one has been brought to justice in connection with the deaths.
   
   60 killed in weekend battles
   At least 56 Tamil Tiger rebels and four government troops have been killed in heavy fighting across Sri Lanka’s embattled north over the weekend, the defence ministry said Sunday.
   Helicopter gunships were deployed against suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam strongholds in the coastal district of Mannar on Saturday, the defence ministry said.

The UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, Sunday met a group of mid-level ministers in a visit to Myanmar that so far appears to have failed to push the ruling junta into making any concessions on an upcoming vote.
   Twice during his trip the regime has openly rebuffed his diplomatic overtures, while he has been denied access to key decision-makers such as junta leader Than Shwe, casting real doubt on how much his mission can achieve.
   Gambari met Myanmar’s minister of health, minister of planning, deputy foreign minister and civil service chairman at a military guesthouse on Sunday morning, a United Nations statement said.
   It gave no details on what was discussed.A government official said earlier that Gambari met the information minister, Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, but the UN did not mention the meeting.
   The Nigerian diplomat was granted a rare meeting here Saturday with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
   However, that was quickly overshadowed when the junta rejected his offer to send foreign observers to a planned constitutional referendum in May designed to pave the way for multi-party elections in 2010.
   Gambari’s visit had already run into trouble Friday when Kyaw Hsan accused him of bias in favour of Aung San Suu Kyi, and said the junta would not make any changes to the constitution, which bars her from running.
   The UN envoy had been expected to leave military-run Myanmar on Sunday, but extended his trip by one day despite the setbacks.
   ‘His visit has been extended, so he will go back tomorrow. His schedule is always changing,’ said a government official who did not want to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
   Gambari had arrived Thursday aiming to push the junta to include Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party in the referendum and elections.
   The constitution would bar Aung San Suu Kyi from the polls because of her marriage to a foreigner, while a new law limits the NLD’s ability to campaign by criminalising public speeches and leaflets about the referendum.

The daughter of Malaysia’s opposition figurehead Anwar Ibrahim and an ethnic Indian activist who is in custody were among shock winners in the nation’s weekend polls, results showed Sunday.
   In her first ever run for parliament, Nurul Izzah Anwar toppled a cabinet minister in just one of several high-profile government scalps claimed by the opposition.
   ‘Winds of change have taken place, a lot of people... want a change in the current leadership and are fed up with the arrogance shown by the government,’ said the 27-year-old graduate from Johns Hopkins University.
   ‘I am amazed by the readiness for change. We are undergoing history as we speak,’ she told a press conference at her father’s home after defeating the minister for women, family and the community.

Thousands of Afghan students blocked a highway and threatened attacks on foreign troops on Sunday in the latest protest against the reprinting of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish papers.
   Sunday’s protest near the city of Jalalabad on the highway leading to Pakistan followed violent demonstrations a day earlier in the western city of Herat against the cartoon and a film on the Koran by a right wing Dutch politician.
   Chanting anti-Western slogans, the marchers in Jalalabad burnt Danish and Dutch flags demanding the cartoonist and the politician, who plans to release his film this month, be put on trial.
   ‘If our demands are not fulfilled, we will stage more protests and resort to suicide attacks against the foreigners,’ said Ibrahim, a university student.
   The demonstrators also demanded Kabul freeze its ties with the Dutch and Danish governments and expel troops from the two countries who operate under NATO’s command in Afghanistan.
   The Afghan government has called the reprinting of the cartoon an attack against Islam and one official has warned it would swell the ranks of al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies.
   Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders is expected to release his film, thought to be critical of the Qur’an, later this month. Wilders has given few details, but in the past he has called the Qur’an a ‘fascist’ book that ‘incites violence.’

Thailand’s prime minister on Sunday vowed not to interfere in the trial of his old ally Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted premier who is due in court this week to face corruption charges.
   ‘He (Thaksin) is coming back to face trial this week. People said be careful, this government should not interfere with the justice system,’ the prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, said on his weekly television address.
   ‘This government would not dare to interfere with justice,’ he said.
   Thaksin returned to Thailand on February 28 for the first time since his ouster in a military coup in September 2006.
   General elections in December brought his allies in the People Power Party into government, paving the way for his return after 17 months in self-imposed exile.
   The entrepreneur-turned-politician is due in court on Wednesday when he is expected to enter a plea on charges of using his political office to win a property deal for his wife.
   Thaksin said on Thursday that he would ask the Supreme Court to grant him permission to travel to Britain, where he owns the English Premier League football club Manchester City.