Serb police find harmless "bomb" under leader's car
Source: Reuters
(Updates with police saying no live bomb found) BELGRADE, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Serb police on Friday removed a suspect device from a car used by the Liberal Democratic Party leader two days before a parliamentary election but found what they said was a harmless bundle of wires and wet powder. "We found a package, tied with wires, which contained a brick-coloured powder inside, very wet with no detonator. We do not believe it could have exploded ... we don't believe it could have caused injury," police spokesman Rodoljub Milovic told B92 television. Party leader Cedomir Jovanovic was in a Belgrade restaurant when his security detail noticed something suspicious under his car parked outside, party sources said earlier. "His security saw the object hanging under the car. It looked like a bomb. They didn't know what to do so they called the police," one witness told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Jovanovic, 35, rose to prominence as a student leader who organised protests against the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic and was instrumental in his arrest and handover to the Hague war crimes tribunal in 2001. He was a close associate of Serbian reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated in March 2003, allegedly by Milosevic loyalists. Jovanovic is the only politician who has urged Serb voters to ignore promises from mainstream parties that breakaway Kosovo province, whose 90 percent Albanian majority demands independence from Serbia, can be forced to remain under Serbian sovereignty with diplomatic backing from Russia. The West favours granting Kosovo a form of supervised independence.
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