Chancellor Angela Merkel met Friday with Serbian President Boris Tadic as part of a series of discussions with foreign leaders ahead of Germany's EU presidency starting in January, DPA reported. Merkel said before the start of the meeting that she planned to raise the issue of Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia which has been under United Nations administration since 1999. A decision is due next year on whether the predominantly Albanian- populated province should be given some form of independence - a step which Serbia strongly opposes. Merkel told Tadic that Germany was interested in having close relations with Serbia and was prepared to help bring it more in line with mainstream Europe. A condition for this was that Belgrade "cooperated well" with the international criminal tribunal in The Hague that was prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, she said.
