Minister, 'Over 2 million Serbs outside Serbia'

Serbia's minister for the diaspora, Srdjan Sreckovic, has called on ethnic Serbs to declare themselves as such in censuses due to be carried out in Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, in order to establish the true number of Serbs in the region.

"There is no reason for them to be afraid of doing so as these are all democratic and civilized countries, are EU member states or are on the way to becoming so," the minister said.

Sreckovic said the ministry estimated that about 2,120,000 Serbs now live outside Serbia in the region, Around half this figure, about 1.1 million, live in Bosnia and Herzegovina's mainly Serbian "entity", Republika Srpska.

About 200,000 Serbs live in Croatia and a similar amount live in Montenegro.

But numbers of Serbs elsewhere are less clear. Sreckovic said that members of the Serbian minority in Albania, for example, had not been able to declare themselves as Serbs for over 50 years.

He hoped they would be able to do so in the next census. According to some estimates, about 30,000 Serbs live in Albania.

When it comes to other regional countries, statistics from 2003 show that about 36,000 Serbs lived in Macedonia. Their number is believed to have increased by about 15,000, the minister said.

Once the true demographic strength of Serbs in the region was established,it would be easier to lobby for their national rights, the minster observed.

"The position of the Serbian people in regional countries is not even close to what we would want it to be," Sreckovic said, adding that some certain progress has been made.