Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic says he is convinced that Serbia will remain firmly on the European path when he "leaves the government in a month, two, or three."

During his meeting in Belgrade with members of EU's Working Party on Enlargement (COELA) and representatives of the EU Council and the European Commission, Vucic said that Serbia's strategic goal is EU membership, while maintaining traditionally good relations with "friends from the East."

President Tomislav Nikolic said in New York that he insisted on several important topics during the UN Security Council meeting on Monday.

The meeting was dedicated to the latest report of the UN secretary-general on the work of the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK.

According to Nikolic, among those topics was "how to influence Pristina to meet all its obligations under the Brussels agreement."

RSF and CPJ urged UN Secretary General António Guterres to take steps to address the urgent issue of safety of journalists.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Secretary General Christophe Deloire and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Executive Director Joel Simon met with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres today to discuss the #ProtectJournalists campaign to appoint a UN Special Representative for the safety of journalists.

Former head of the Bulgarian national intelligence service, Kircho Kirov, thinks that Serbia is becoming "a regional military factor."

Beta agency reported this on Thursday, citing Kirov as saying that his country, as a NATO member, "has problems with its rearmament, while Serbia is receiving modern Russian combat equipment for free."

Unknown persons have damaged a memorial plaque in Pristina dedicated to Slovak KFOR soldiers who died in a plane crash in 2006.

The Kosovo police announced this on Tuesday.

The police said they launched an investigation after receiving a report that the memorial, installed last year in a park in Pristina by Slovak representatives in KFOR, had been damaged.

Bilateral cooperation is developing successfully between Serbia and Kazakhstan, "and there are no outstanding issues."

Serbia's First Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic and Kazakhstan's ambassador to Serbia based in Budapest, Nurbahom Rustemov, said this during their meeting in Belgrade on Tuesday.

Marko Djuric has offered his condolences to Russian Ambassador Aleksandar Chepurin over the death of Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin.

According to a statement, the head of the Serbian Government Office for Kosovo and the top Russian diplomat in Serbia met in Belgrade on Tuesday.

During the meeting, Djuric said that "the Russian Federation and world diplomacy lost a great fighter for the respect of international law and the acquis on which the United Nations are based."

The creation of a Kosovo army would represent a new step toward the deepening of regional instability and Serbia expects the UN Security Council to react.

This is according to the Serbian Ambassador in Moscow Slavenko Terzic.

According to Russian daily Izvestiya, Terzic also remarked that the answer to the question, "who and why needs a destabilization of the region" should be found.

"New turbulent times are ahead of Serbia, many can't wait to undermine and destabilize it," says Aleksadar Vucic.

However, added the prime minister and the presidential candidate of the ruling SNS - "our message is that we will protect Serbia."

Vucic made the comments as he spoke with citizens welcoming him in the town of Vrbas, where he traveled for the start of reconstruction works on a local elementary school named after Petar Petrovic Njegos.

President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic will be a candidate in the presidential elections, Sputnik and N1 are reporting. B92 has also unofficially received confirmation of this news from Nikolic's cabinet. According to media reports, the president made the decision on Wednesday evening, as he celebrated his 65th birthday. Earlier, Tanjug was told by sources from his cabinet that they could "neither confirm nor deny" that the president would launch a reelection bid.