By Sarah Marsh and Ivana Sekularac

BELGRADE -Serbian President Aleksandar Vuvic appeared to rebuff pressure from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday for Serbia to join European Union sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, saying he did not believe sanctions to be “efficient”.

Scholz, who is on a two-day tour of the Western Balkans, said that as an EU membership candidate, Serbia should join the bloc in its measures against Moscow, which all its members were required to follow.

Speaking at the same news conference in Belgrade, Vucic said Serbia was in a difficult position and that the EU should consider that Serbia and Russia had long-standing special ties.

“As far as sanctions are concerned we have different position…. We remember sanctions (against Serbia)and we do not think sanctions are efficient,” Vucic said.

He did not say whether Serbia planned to introduce sanctions on Russia.

On his trip, Scholz promised to help the Western Balkans to reinvigorate their long-stalled campaign for European Union membership, a move aimed at easing regional tensions and fending off the influence of rival powers such as Russia.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has lent a new sense of urgency to the process of to tying Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo closer to the 27-member EU, whether through full membership or an alternative community.

Speaking alongside the Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti in Pristina earlier on Friday, Scholz said his government had made Kosovo’s EU membership a priority and would also support its aspiration for EU visa liberalisation.

“It is very important to send a new signal of confidence and hope that this accession process is wanted by the EU with great seriousness, and that it also has a realistic chance if everyone makes an effort,” Scholz said.

Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova have pushed to accelerate their own bids for EU membership since the invasion, raising questions over whether their accession should be fast-tracked or should wait their turn after Western Balkan countries.

EU countries including Germany have said there could be no short-cuts to Ukraine’s membership.

“We are also in favour of Ukraine’s membership into the EU. Of course, Ukraine has all the attention and it is in the hearts of everybody who wants peace and democracy because there is a terrible war going on there, an unprovoked and unjustified war,” Kurti said.

“But I believe there must be both (to join EU), Ukraine and Western Balkans,” Kurti said.

Scholz’s visit comes hot on the heels of that of European Council President Charles Michel and ahead of an EU-Western Balkans leaders’ summit on June 23.

DISILLUSIONMENT

The prospect of EU membership had for years been the main driver of reform and greater cooperation in the region after a decade of war and upheaval in the 1990s, until EU expansion stalled, spawning disillusionment.

Unresolved conflicts there have given rise to new tensions lately, such as the pro-Russian Bosnian Serbs’ secession plans.

“We will not surrender this region in the heart of Europe to Moscow’s influence,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had said when she paid a visit to the Western Balkans in March.

Florian Bieber, a Balkan expert at Austria’s University of Graz, said the lack in progress in the region’s EU membership bids was partly to blame.

“The fact it hasn’t happened is a real problem and the growing influence of other countries like Russia and China is a result of this process not developing,” Bieber said.

He said it now remained to be seen whether Scholz’s government, which took office in December, will push the process forward or “muddle along” as former chancellor Angela Merkel did by professing support for the region but doing little to further it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had also been set to visit Serbia this week, but his visit was cancelled when nearby countries closed their airspace to his flight.

Scholz is set to travel later to Thessaloniki in Greece to meet representatives of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), a 12-country Balkan regional body.

On Saturday, he travels on to North Macedonia and Bulgaria, which are locked in a dispute preventing the start of EU accession talks.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh in Berlin and Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade; Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci, Editing by Alex Richardson and Raissa Kasolowsky)

By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON -The congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold hearings throughout June that will drill into the details of what it says was a widespread plot led by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The House of Representatives committee investigating the riot by Trump supporters laid the groundwork on Thursday night for at least five upcoming hearings that will focus on the groups and people it says were involved in plotting and staging the riot. Testimony also will focus on Trump’s activities before and during the attack.

Starting at 10 a.m. ET/1400 GMT Monday, the committee will focus on Trump’s contention that his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden was due to unfounded allegations of election fraud, the so-called “Big Lie.”

The third hearing on June 15 will focus on Trump’s efforts to replace the U.S. attorney general in order to assemble a team at the Department of Justice to promote his false election claims. Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general at the time, is among those scheduled to testify, according to a person familiar with the matter.

On his Truth Social Internet platform, Trump on Friday called former Attorney General William Barr “weak and frightened.” Barr resigned in December 2021 and testified to the committee that he had not seen evidence of significant election fraud.

Trump also denied causing the storming of the Capitol or endorsing the crowd’s chants to “hang” his vice president, Mike Pence, for carrying out the ceremonial role of formally certifying the election result.

‘VIOLENT MOB’

The fourth hearing, set for June 16, will focus on Pence, while the last two will focus on “how President Trump summoned a violent mob and directed them, illegally, to march on the U.S. Capitol,” Cheney said.

The attack on the Capitol by thousands of people – many waving Trump flags and wearing his signature “Make America Great Again” gear – delayed certification of the election for hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths.

The onslaught marked the only time in U.S. history that power was not passed peacefully from one president to another.

The committee has not yet named additional witnesses, but Cheney said upcoming hearings will include testimony from senior Justice Department and White House officials who threatened to resign over Trump’s actions.

Cheney also implicated Republican Representative Scott Perry, saying he sought from Trump a presidential pardon for his role in trying to overturn the election. Cheney also said “multiple” other Republican congressmen also sought pardons, although she did not name names.

Perry strongly denied the allegation in a statement on Twitter. “The notion that I ever sought a Presidential pardon for myself or other Members of Congress is an absolutely, shameless, and soulless lie,” he said.

Spokespeople for the Select Committee declined comment on the pardons issue.

Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democratic committee member, said such requests were an “explicit statement of consciousness of guilt.”

“Are we going to have political elites unleashing mobs in order to try to attack the results of the election and seize the presidency?” he asked.

Republican lawmakers offered little response to the hearing.

The Conservative Political Action Conference, however, dismissed the committee’s work as a “witch hunt.”

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Sarah N. Lynch and Timothy Ahmann; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Alistair Bell)

By Leroy Leo

(Reuters) -The U.S. government expects to receive an additional 300,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine against monkeypox in the next few weeks as cases across the country jumped to 45 from 25 four days ago.

The United States currently holds about 72,000 doses of Jynneos in its strategic national stockpile, Dawn O’Co​nnell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told reporters at a news briefing.

Earlier on Friday, the United States placed an order for an additional 500,000 doses of bulk vaccine to be delivered later this year. The company said the total U.S. inventory of the vaccine would reach nearly 2 million doses when combined with a 2020 order for 1.4 million doses.

The Danish company’s vaccine, which was developed with the support of HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is approved to treat both monkeypox and smallpox.

O’Connell told the briefing the U.S. has agreed to sell about 215,000 doses of the vaccine back to Bavarian Nordic for use in Europe.

The U.S. doses were produced on a manufacturing line that is still awaiting U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. The line has already been cleared for U.S. by European regulators.

“It didn’t make sense that while we were waiting for FDA to get the inspection done, we sit on doses our international colleagues in Europe could actually use,” she said.

O’Connell said she expects the FDA to inspect the manufacturing line in the next few weeks.

The United States also has more than 100 million doses of ACAM2000, a smallpox vaccine from Emergent BioSolutions Inc, that is also effective against monkeypox.

Together, O’Connell said the United States has more than enough doses to meet U.S. demand. To date, the United States has supplied doses and treatments to 16 states and jurisdictions.

Monkeypox, a disease that is endemic in parts of Africa, has been spreading globally in the last month, with more than 1,300 cases reported in countries where it is not endemic, most of them in Europe.

The virus is spread primarily through direct contact with bodily fluids or sores of someone who has monkeypox, or through direct contact with materials that have been touched by an infected person. The virus may also spread through respiratory secretions, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the briefing.

(Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by David Gregorio)