BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is considering calling the third snap parliamentary elections since 2014 to further cement his Progressive Party’s (SNS) grip on power, he said late on Monday.

Vucic, a ultranationalist firebrand during the Yugoslav wars of 1990s who a decade later has become committed to joining the European Union, said “people in the SNS are overwhelmingly for elections.”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told Pink TV late on Monday that his recent conversation in Belgrade with a US State Department official was "not easy".
According to Vucic, the US officials came here "to fulfill their interests, not ours."

Five journalist and media associations (NUNS, NDNV, ANEM, LP and AOM) in the strongest terms condemned airing of a promotional video on TV Most and TV Pink by which “a horrific campaign” is underway against Oliver Ivanovic and his colleagues Dragisa Milovic and Dragan Jablanovic, Serbian media reported.

“The acts of the above mentioned media represent a grave violation of journalistic standards and electoral rules, something that Oliver Ivanovic warned the Independent Media Commission in Kosovo yesterday and complained against the work of TV Most from Zvecan,” KIM Radio reported.

Serbia's decision to withdraw its embassy staff from Macedonia is in fact "a message to Skopje."

The message is that Serbia "knows what they laid their heads together for, and what they agreed on," First Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Tuesday.

"That's something not done among friends," Dacic said referring to Skopje's actions, and added that despite this, Serbia was seeking "good relations with all countries in the region, for the sake of peace and stability."

Chairman of the Assembly Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun said today to TV Pink that, by organizing an informal meeting of the President of Serbia and Kosovo, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini has sent a message to the Kosovo Albanians that they cannot give up the Brussels process and the implementation of the deal.

Outgoing prime minister and elected president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić answered question during interview with Belgrade based TV Pink about the Government, Kosovo, NATO, Kalabić, Stepinac, labour costs, Clinical Center Niš, inauguration and protests ...

Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Đurić confirmed this morning that Gradimir Mikić, Mayor of Ranilug/Ranillug, the municipality with Serbian majority in Kosovo, has been arrested and later released.

Đurić said that he was arrested only because he had in his vehicle 1,000 pre-election posters with the image of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland that "peace and stability have the greatest importance."

In this regard, Vucic added, he was "also ready to establish a hotline between Belgrade - Pristina.

Vucic told TV Pink that he had "many important discussion for Serbia at the World Economic Forum," and underlined that he believes "we will have the strength to calm down certain things - even those that were under no influence of ours whatsoever."

"Thanks to the wisdom and the desire to avoid conflicts and preserve peace Serbia managed to do that," PM Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday evening in Belgrade.

Speaking about the incidents in Kosovo over a passenger train traveling from Belgrade to Kosovska Mitrovica, Vucic, who was a guest on a TV Pink talk show, added:

"A good number of Serbs are angry that we did not push the train to Kosovska Mitrovica, we could have done that, but there would have been dead on both sides."

Serbian president's media advisor Stanislava Pak stated on Thursday that Serbia will do everything it can to access the EU but she also noted that the country made it clear at the very beginning of the process that it will not fulfil the condition that refers to recognition of the so-called independence of Kosovo.