Belgrade  - Serbia needs to curb spending and continue economic reforms in order to keep inflation under control through next year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned Wednesday.

Serbia is lagging with privatization and structural reforms, and its government faces pressure to meet election promises of increased spending, the head of an IMF delegation, Albert Jaeger, told reporters.

Overspending is expected to push Serbia's current account deficit to 18 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of the year, which it must cover by borrowing abroad.

The IMF said Serbia should seek to cut the deficit to 10 per cent of GDP in the mid-term.

Belgrade - There has been very little of turn thy cheek or love thy neighbour in the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) over the turbulent past year, but instead, plenty of fighting, backstabbing and hostility.

In Belgrade, the capricious hardline Kosovo Bishop Artemije openly went against the Holy Synod, the church government, when it tried to restrain his heavy-handed tactics which led to fistfights among monks in the holy Visoki Decani monastery.

To the west, two years after the tiny republic Montenegro claimed independence from Serbia, its clergy also wants to break away from Belgrade's rule.

Belgrade - Many close associates of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic have regained key positions in Serbia, a press report said Saturday.

"Three have become ministers and two are running state corporations," the Belgrade newspaper Press reported.

This week saw the return of top Milosevic aide Gorica Gajevic, after an eight-year absence from the politcal stage. The former secretary-general of Milosevic's Socialist party SPS was given a senior position in Raska, a town 200 kilometres south of Belgrade.

Belgrade - The opposition ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leadership Friday expelled a renegade moderate wing in a bid to re-assert control of its detained extremist chief.

The SRS policy-making body convened amid accusations of "treason" flung at the former acting party chief, Tomislav Nikolic, who resigned a week ago and cleared room to launch his own party.

Nikolic and his followers walked out of the meeting before it ended. He said the proceedings turned into an "unending argument."

"We don't belong here. We will follow our path and SRS its own," Nikolic told journalists after he left the meeting.

Belgrade- The opposition ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) moved a step closer to disintegrating Monday when its ousted acting chief, Tomislav Nikolic, formed a new parliamentary faction.

Nikolic resigned Friday night as under pressure from party leader Vojislav Seselj, who has been on trial at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) since 2003.

Belgrade - Serbia's ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), the country's strongest single force since 2003, seems to be in the process of splitting apart, local newspapers said Saturday.

The SRS party, supported by a third of the electorate, is forming two wings, one behind moderate deputy party chief Tomislav Nikolic and the other hardline extremist, dictated by founder and leader Vojislav Seselj, who has been on trial for war crimes at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia since early 2003.