Prime Minister Cvetkovic has said that a government reshuffle would begin after an assessment of the work of all ministers and stressed that the current year, as the last of the incumbent government's term, was crucial for EU integration and emergence from crisis, which is why 2011 should be refreshed with new energy coming from people able to take up responsibilities.

Pointing out that the reshuffle is not an issue, the prime minister said that Minister Mladjan Dinkic had been dismissed because his statements had questioned the authority of the government of which he himself had been a member.

"Had the procedure for his dismissal not been launched now, I would have his achievements put under scrutiny. You see, he was in charge of employment, and exactly this segment of the government's work has been most frequently criticized," Cvetkovic told daily Blic.

"I intend to complete the process in a single series of steps. I will assess individual achievements of each minister and determine what could have been done better and had not been done so, taking into consideration that something just had to be done the way it had been done. After I have completed that part of the job, I will sit and talk with the coalition partners and decide on possible new appointments in the government" he argued.

As regards the dismissal of Dinkic, the prime minister said he could only choose between two things - to remove Dinkic from office or to have the government continue functioning in humiliating conditions.

"I was not in two minds. I made the decision that the government would do right, or not at all," he said, adding that by restoring the room for serious work in the government, he wanted to restore its authority and the public trust in the institution. Answering the question whether he consulted someone in connection with the dismissal of Dinkic, the prime minister said that he had talked with Serbian President Boris Tadic.

"I addressed the Serbian president and told him that I had to choose between two options - we would either fall apart because I would not be able to run the government under such circumstances or we would replace the people who had brought us into the situation in the first place," Cvetkovic pointed out, adding that Tadic had immediately called a meeting of the presidency of the Democratic Party and that the party had given him their support to take the necessary steps.

Cvetkovic noted that he had not been present at the meeting but that he had been aware of the support and had used his constitutional authority to remove Dinkic from office.