The ministry reported on Saturday morning that no explosive device had been planted under the car used by Jovanovic. Police in Belgrade on Friday evening removed the suspect device from the car but found what they said was a harmless bundle of wires and wet powder.
The police intervened immediately because they suspected that the device was a planted explosive.
"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.
The car was parked outside a restaurant in downtown Belgrade and the restaurant's security called the police to report about the suspect device. At the time Joovanovic was having a dinner in the restaurant with his coalition partner Zarko Korac, the head of the Serbian Helsinki Committee, Sonja Biserko, and Croatian politician Vesna Pusic.
The LDP said today that it was outraged by the Interior Ministry's statement given that a former official of the Interior Ministry, Nenad Milic, who is now in the LDP leadership, confirmed to reporters that there were "five or six connected fuses found under the back seat in the car where Jovanovic usually sits".
The entire incident should also be looked against the background of the latest threats sent to Jovanovic including the threat that "he will not enter the parliament alive".
On Sunday, Serbia is holding early parliamentary elections and Jovanovic is running for a seat in the 250-seat assembly.
The LDP today labelled the police statement as an insult at the public that "should now believe that the entire street in downtown Belgrade was cordoned off for five hours and that the car had to be taken away from the scene only to see that experts established that it was material for fireworks," the LDP said in its response.
Jovanovic would not comment on the incident due to a ban on electioneering ahead of tomorrow's elections.
The 35-year-old Jovanovic was a close associate of Serbian reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated in March 2003.
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.