SERBIAN COALITION ON THROWING OUT COALITION PARTNER

BELGRADE, May 24 (Hina)- The presidency of the ruling Serbian DOS coalition will decide on Friday night whether to meet demands by some parties in the coalition to withdraw MP's from Vojislav Kostunic's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) from the Serbian Assembly and to exclude the party from the coalition. #L# These demands have been intensified since the opposition and DSS have made a quorum in the Assembly impossible and following the exclusion of ten MP's of the Serbian Radical Party and the insults directed towards the Assembly's president Natasa Micic when the session was halted on Wednesday until further notice. The DSS rejected accusations that its MP's are making a quorum impossible in the Assembly and in a statement noted that recently physical strength had taken control inciting a true parliamentary crisis. The DSS has 45 mandates in the Assembly and it is the second largest party following Zoran Dindic's Democratic Party with 47 mandates. The DOS coalition in the election in December 2000 had a joint list with 250 potential MP's - the total number of MP's in the Assembly. The coalition won 176 mandates and so had 84 extra possible MP's. It has in the meantime already changed 20 MP's and that number could reach as high as 50. Seeing that this number includes Prime Minister Zoran Dindic and some of his ministers and deputy prime ministers in the government, calculations point to only 30 possible replacements and so if DOS renounces the mandates of 45 seats that it can replace with its MP's, the remainder would go to the second largest parliamentary party, the Socialist Party of Serbia. Cedomir Jovanovic, the DOC bench leader stated that the DOS presidency does not intend to directly withdraw all the mandates but only for those most irregular MP's and seeing that most of these are amongst the DSS then Kostunica should think about this, Jovanovic said. (hina) sp