Belgrade - Around 20,000 Kosovan Serbs have gone for several days without electricity, in a dispute over payments with their supplier, it was reported Saturday.

According to the "Press" newspaper in Belgrade, the Serbian authorities have ordered the Serb minority in Kosovo not to pay their bills to their Albanian electricity company.

The Belgrade daily cited unnamed Serbian Kosovans as saying they now felt "betrayed" by Belgrade's advice not to pay their bills, after their electricity supply was cut off.

Belgrade  - Serbian officials launched an investigation against five former policemen suspected of war crimes during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

The office of the war crimes prosecutor requested "an investigation against five former members of the special police unit suspected of committing war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war," a statement said.

The prosecution ordered their detention, the statement said, adding that "this is not an action against policemen who defended their country in 1999".

Pristina - European Union judges in a Kosovo appeals court cleared an Albanian man who had previously been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 2001 bombing of a Serbian bus, local reports said Friday.

The appeals court ruled Thursday that the evidence against Florim Ejupi was insufficient for a conviction and ordered his release. The panel was comprised of judges from Eulex, the law-enforcing mission EU deployed to Kosovo in December.

It was the first ruling of the Eulex appeals court since the mission deployed four months ago.

Pristina  - Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci on Sunday expressed a wish for conciliation with Serbia, inviting Serbian President Boris Tadic to the former Serbia province.

Thaci made the invitation after a visit to Kosovo's Serb enclave of Caglavica, a suburb of the capital Pristina.

Communication between Pristina and Belgrade is "unavoidable" and is in the interests of Kosovo, said Thaci.

Pristina - Some 200 Kosovo Serbs blocked on Thursday all access to a Kosovo police station in the northern town of Leposavic, after the announcements that the director of Kosovo police and an official of the European Union would visit.

Police director of the European Union's law enforcing mission in Kosovo (Eulex) Reiner Kuehn and Kosovo police director Sherement Ahmeti visited the Kosovo-Serbia border crossing in Leposavic earlier but when they tried to enter the police station in the city they were stopped by the demonstrators.

Pristina - The European Union's law enforcement mission in Kosovo, the Eulex, handed out its first war crimes conviction in the former Serbian province on Wednesday, sentencing an Albanian to 17 years in prison for murder.

Gani Gasi, 59, was sentenced for shooting and killing a man and wounding three members of his family in 1998. The verdict was reached by a panel of two Eulex and one Kosovo judge.

The prosecutor was also a member of Eulex, a mission of 1,900 policemen, judges, prosecutors and customs officials deployed in late 2008 to help Kosovo along its first sovereign steps.