The United States has suspended some aid to Serbia's government for the fourth year in succession over its failure to arrest and extradite Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic.
The cut-off of $7 million (€5.5 million) in government-to-government aid is not so much a financial penalty as a political gesture, since Washington will continue to provide much more in economic assistance to the Serbs.
It follows a decision by the European Union in early May to suspend talks on closer ties with Serbia after it missed the latest in a string of deadlines to hand over Mladic.
A statement from the US embassy in Belgrade said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been unable to certify to Congress that Belgrade was co-operating with the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which indicted the wartime Bosnian Serb military commander with genocide in 1995.
Ambassador Michael Polt said Washington would go on sending more than $62 million (€48.5 million) in aid "to the people of this country in an effort to see your economy develop and provide jobs and hope for its citizens".
Mladic is charged alongside Bosnian Serb former leader Radovan Karadzic with genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys and the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo that killed about 10,000 civilians.
UN chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte says he is hiding in Serbia with the help of army and intelligence hardliners.
Serbia admits Mladic had such help in the past, but Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica now says he has gone to ground. A flurry of reports forecasting Mladic's imminent arrest dominated headlines in the run-up to the May 1st EU deadline, but the speculation has since died down.