Reform stumbles as Dinkic falls

IN LATE JULY, Serbian prime minister Zoran Zivkovic completed a visit to Washington to present Serbia for the 21st century. He posed for the traditional handshake photo with secretary of state Colin Powell, and declared that relations between Serbia and the US were the best they had been for 50 years.

But while Zivkovic met with US firms such as Morgan Stanley and Bechtel to discuss the possibility of their investing in Serbia, the free-market reform project at home was starting to unravel with the resignation of a key figure behind Serbian reforms in the past three years.