The Federation's mission is to improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity. It is the world's largest humanitarian organization and its millions of volunteers are active in over 183 countries. For more information: http:www.ifrc.org
Appeal total: CHF 6,096,000

Serbia & Montenegro programme summary <page 2>

Kosovo programme summary <page 8>

Serbia & Montenegro Secretariat 2+2 support strategy:

Kosovo Secretariat 2+2 support strategy:

For more information on Serbia &

BELGRADE, Dec 27 (AFP) - The future status of UN-administered Kosovo province will be the key issue in international political discussions next year, Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said here Tuesday.
"The issue of Kosovo will be the key one in 2006... Everything should be done to solve this problem peacefully by political means," Fini said after a series of talks with top Serbian officials in Belgrade.

In November, the UN's special Kosovo envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, began a mission to resolve the status of the province,

ZAGREB, Dec 27 (AFP) - Since the end of the 1991-95 Serbo-Croatian war 123,000 Serb refugees who fled Croatia, or about 40 percent, have returned, the United Nations refugee agency here said Tuesday.
"Until November 30 we have recorded 123,000 Serb refugees who have returned to Croatia," UN High Commission for Refugees spokesman in Zagreb Neven Crvenkovic told AFP.

The majority, or around 87,000, have returned from Serbia-Montenegro, he added.

During and after the country's war of independence from the former Yugoslavia more than 280,000 ethnic Serbs

UNMIK Spokesperson Neeraj Singh:
I see the holiday mood here already. Season's greetings to all of you from all of us. I have a couple of announcements for you: Budget 2006 Regulation promulgated PDSRSG Larry Rossin promulgated on behalf of the SRSG yesterday the Kosovo Consolidated Budget 2006 Regulation. The 2006 budget development followed a very good process. It included all PISG and UNMIK stakeholders. It also drew on the conclusions and advice of the several IMF and World Bank missions to Kosovo. The draft 2006 budget

SOFIA, Dec 20 (AFP) - Albanian Foreign Minister Besnik Mustafaj expressed hopes Tuesday that long-awaited talks on Kosovo's status would culminate by mid-2006 with independence for the UN-administered province.

"We support (UN Special Envoy for Kosovo) Martti Ahtisaari's aim for a fast outcome to the talks. Any prolongation will hinder the process. Our hope is the target deadline of mid-2006 will be met," Mustafaj told a press conference in Sofia.

Tirana has generally backed Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership in its demands for unconditional independence

PRISTINA - PDSRSG Larry Rossin today promulgated on behalf of the SRSG three Regulations establishing the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Kosovo Judicial Council, as well as setting out the framework and guiding principles of the Kosovo Police Service, which together implement the first phase of UNMIK's transfer of competencies in the field of police and justice.
DSRSG for Police and Justice Jean Dussourd said: "Today is a very important day for the rule of law in Kosovo. As the Kosovo Police Service and the Kosovo Correctional Service reach their

State Department releases chronology of activities spanning 143 years

The United States has spent more than a billion dollars in the past dozen years on humanitarian land mine removal efforts around the world.

This money has been spent to remove land mines, pay for educational messages on the risks posed by mines, help victims of mine injuries, and fund research and development to improve existing humanitarian mine removal programs.

BELGRADE, Dec 15 (AFP) - The United Nations and Serbia said Thursday they were hopeful that direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina on the future status of disputed Kosovo can start next month.
Albert Rohan, the assistant to UN special Kosovo talks envoy Martti Ahtisaari, said the purpose of his visit to the Serbian capital was to get concrete positions ahead of the talks.

"The shuttle diplomacy serves the purpose to clarify matters and also to (get) the parties to put forward concrete positions, and of course they have then to lead to lead to direct

BELGRADE, Dec 14, 2005 (Xinhua via COMTEX) - The Serbian authorities and Kosovo ethnic Albanian majority must make a compromise in order to reach a decision on Kosovo's future status, a senior UN official said in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Wednesday.
Deputy UN envoy for Kosovo status talks, Albert Rohan, said that the goal of his meetings with Serbian and Albanian negotiating teams was to get a sense of problems that could be reflected on the process of status talks, the official Tanjug news agency reported.

Rohan told a news conference in Pristina