Zagreb  - Demonstrations were held in cities across Croatia on Friday evening to protest the government's newest cost-saving efforts.

Protestors criticized the government cuts for impacting poor people disproportionately and accused the ruling parties and the opposition of mafia contacts. Demonstrators demanded lower food prices and more jobs.

Zagreb- Branko Ivankovic has quit as coach of quit Croatian football champions Dinamo Zagreb, two days before a big UEFA Cup game against Spartak Moscow, the club said on Tuesday.

"We talked daily and decided that the path we were heading is not good so we decided mutually to go separate ways. We just weren't happy - neither the club nor the coach," Dinamo's sport director Zoran Mamic told journalists in Zagreb.

Zagreb - Croatian President Stjepan Mesic is under fire for saying the state, facing the financial crisis, should save money on military funerals for war veterans, local media reported Tuesday.

"Five veteran funerals each day. The army must send a platoon with full honours, with salvoes, with pay, with wreaths," Mesic said in a regular morning radio interview.

"It means 13,000 soldiers go out each year - we can find something to save there, like to say farewell to soldiers with a wreath," he said.

Belgrade - It was only Tuesday that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided to hear Croatia's genocide case against Serbia and already on Wednesday the thin scabs covering old Balkan war wounds had been scratched off.

"Serbia raped" was one among the fiery headlines from Serbia's yellow press bringing back memories of the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Zagreb - Croatian authorities on Tuesday welcomed the ruling by the International Court of Justice that it has jurisdiction to hear a claim by Croatia that Serbia committed genocide during the 1991-95 war.

President Stjepan Mesic told state television HTV that he was expecting such a ruling and that he hoped Croatia would win the trial.

"We won in round one. Now we have round two and that is to prove genocide in Croatia," Minister of Justice Ivan Simonovic told daily 24sata. "I'm positive that we have strong arguments," he said.

The Hague - The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled on Tuesday it has jurisdiction to hear a claim by Croatia that Serbia committed genocide against its population in the 1991-95 war.

The ICJ said the decision was final, binding and without appeal and had been made by 10 votes to seven.

Croatia filed the case against the rump Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, in 1999, while it was still run by the strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

Zagreb claims Belgrade fomented and supported a Serb insurgency following Croatia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.