Belgrade - A Serbian policeman taking photos of what he thought was an emaciated corpse nearly fainted when the body raised its head and complained about flashes of light, the Belgrade daily Blic reported Friday.

The incident occurred after police in Kragujevac, an industrial town 120 kilometres south of Belgrade, were called to check up a single- room home owned by a man nobody has seen in two weeks.

The man's neighbours thought the worst when a horrible stench emanated from behind his locked doors.

"We broke in and the man was as dead," said one policeman. "When he spoke we panicked, but the colleague with the camera fell into real shock."

BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 5 - Serbian authorities have stepped up the search for accused Bosnian war criminal Ratko Mladic, searching his son's house in Belgrade Thursday.

Rasim Luajic, president of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, told Radio B92 that no arrest was expected immediately.

"No operation to arrest Ratko Mladic is under way, but rather a search for clues that will lead to Mladic''s arrest," he said.

Other locations in the Serbian capital were also being searched.

Belgrade - When web designer Petar Jakovljevic found a cramped two-bedroom apartment close to downtown Belgrade for 70,000 euros (90,000 dollars), he jumped at the chance.

It was a good deal in Serbia, where a severe housing shortage is keeping the capital's apartment prices at levels similar to the Paris suburbs while the average Serbian earns less than 400 euros (500 dollars) a month.

Jakovljevic, who has a wife and small child, also considered a larger, old apartment on the run-down Balkan city's outskirts that was selling for the same price per square meter.

In the end, they chose the new 35-square-metre flat with elevator and central heating, thinking it's the better investment.

Belgrade - The last of the Yugoslav-era cars, known for their lack of reliability as much as tasteless design and crude unworkmanlike finish, rolled off the assembly line in Serbia on Friday, nearly two decades after Yugoslavia itself fell apart.

Zastava, the car factory in the central Serbian town Kragujevac, has effectively ceased to exist and, following a massive investment by the Italian giant Fiat, is to begin making a modern small car.

Launched in 1953 in a country recovering from a destructive war while trying to implement its own form of socialism, Zastava was to prove that Yugoslavia could build a car of its own.

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.

Belgrade - The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Serge Brammertz, arrived in Belgrade Monday to press Serbian officials for the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the most wanted war crimes suspect.

But Belgrade, despite its ties with the European Union hinging on the arrest of fugitive war criminals, has again said Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime military chief, is out of its reach.

"We have no trail leading to Mladic, only if a miracle should happen," Serbian minister in charge of cooperation with ICTY, Rasim Ljajic, said ahead of Brammertz's arrival.