LOCAL PRESS

Nikolic and Radmanovic for best possible cooperation (RTS)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and member of the B&H Presidency Nebojsa Radmanovic have stressed in Belgrade that work is needed on establishing the best possible cooperation among the countries in the region, primarily in the field of economy, so that they could face the challenges of the global market. With regards to the situation in B&H, Nikolic has emphasized that Serbia, as a signatory of the Dayton Peace Accord, is interested for the progress of both entities in the country and the cooperation that would benefit everybody involved. Nikolic and Radmanovic have expressed pleasure for the very good relations between Serbia and B&H, particularly the Republika Srpska in line with the Agreement on Special ties, and they underlined the desire to further improve those relations, with the aim to improve the life for the citizens in both states.

Serb list MPs not selling themselves to Thaqi (Politika)

Even though the resumption of the constitutive session of the Kosovo Assembly has been postponed for 18 September at the request of the Serb (Srpska) list, there is a possibility that it takes place earlier if 40 MPs based on a written request ask for this. Fatmir Sheholi, political analyst in Pristina, says that Ramush Haradinaj’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AZBK), Isa Mustafa’s Democratic Alliance of Kosovo (DSK), Fatmir Limaj’s Initiative for New Kosovo (NISMA) and Albin Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement have 63 mandates, which is enough for convening a new assembly session. “There is a legal possibility, and the question is whether the post-election bloc will use this right,” says Sheholi. The Serb list could not confirm this, and the leader of the Serb coalition front Aleksandar Jablanovic was unavailable two days for a comment. The leader of the Independent Liberal Party (SLS) Slobodan Petrovic and MP in the Serb (Srpska) bloc, but also the deputy premier in the outgoing Kosovo government, only confirmed that Serb MPs had requested a new term for holding the session in order to “consult inside the list on the future moves, considering the new moment following the signing of the agreement with the AZBK-DSK-NISMA and Albin Kurti”. Petrovic comments the increasingly loud stories on how individuals in the Serb list are “wheeling and dealing” and who will be bought by Hashim Thaqi. “These are pure nonsense and lies. Would anyone destroy his/her reputation and authority for the sake of money. Such stories are launched by those who are used to first selling themselves and then national interests for money and personal interests. As we have said earlier, we will join the Albanian party that has the majority, so stories that we will “sell” ourselves to Thaqi are in vain,” he commented very angrily for Politika the announcements on possible “buying” of certain Serb MPs.

Kosovo Serbs still weighing a coalition with Self-Determination (Novosti)

Support of Kosovo Serb MPs to Haradinaj’s coalition and the Self-Determination Movement will be possible only if they receive assurances that their government will not revise the Brussels agreement and that Belgrade will not be squeezed out of the dialogue on normalization of relations, Leposavic Mayor Dragan Jablanovic tells Novosti, explaining the reasons why the Serb list had requested a postponement of the constitutive session of the Kosovo Assembly. “Self-Determination entered the coalition with the bloc around Isa Mustafa’s DSK, and the leader of this movement requests the revision of the Brussels agreement, i.e. to exclude Serbia from the negotiations, which is unacceptable for us. If they want our support, we request that disputable parts be taken out of the coalition agreement with Self-Determination,” says Jablanovic. According to him, there is enough time for consultations until 18 September, and the Serb list will not pass any decisions without agreement with the state leadership in Belgrade.

Joksimovic: Negotiations to open by end of year (Novosti)

It would be realistic for Serbia to open Chapter 32, relating to the financial control and control of budgetary assets, in the accession talks with the EU, stated Serbian Minister in charge of European integrations Jadranka Joksimovic. The government is working intensively on the social reforms, primarily for the sake of our country making progress and having better living perspective in Serbia, so I expect the EU to recognize it, Joksimovic told Novosti. She expects the new EU High Representative Federica Mogherini to play an impartial and constructive part, especially in the process of supervising and mediating in the continuation of the Brussels dialogue.

Kosovo – from precedent to rule (Politika, by Biljana Mitrinovic)

Fifteen years after NATO’s aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia and six years since Kosovo’s secession, there is nothing left of the Western assertion that the Kosovo case is “unique” and that separatists throughout the world will not be able to use it as a precedent. No one has advocated with more enthusiasm and ingenuity the thesis on Kosovo’s uniqueness than Washington and Brussels. Now, the issue of retailoring borders has, quite unexpectedly, arrived at the very door of 10 Downing Street.

Regardless of how the Scots will vote at the referendum on independence on Thursday, it is clear that the fairytales about the Kosovo case being sui generis had begun to really bother the Serbians and many others in the international community. This has been clear from the very start, especially for certain European states that have similar separatist problems and that, despite all pressures, have remained steadfast in their intention not to recognize the secession of Kosovo, knowing that the Kosovo precedent will be an inspiration to many separatist movements. At issue are Greece, Romania, Cyprus, Spain and Slovakia.

British foreign policy analyst James Ker–Lindsay warned of this problem, saying that the greatest cause for concern with respect to the Scottish referendum is its possible influence on the Western Balkans. “It can undoubtedly have influence on Bosnia-Herzegovina (B&H), Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo. There is certainly fear that it may lead to the renewal of regional tensions,” the British expert for the Balkans told Tanjug, stressing that other peoples and territories in Europe will wonder why they are not allowed the same rights as the people of Scotland. And indeed, the question is what could Brussels, following the referendum in Scotland, respond to the Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik  when he gives statements, which especially get on Brussels’ nerves, on the RS’ aspirations to organize a referendum and secede from B&H.

It is interesting that the mood of the Scots has shocked the British who, at one time, as a colonial power, drew many world borders with a ruler. The surprise of British Premier David Cameroon was even greater since he counted on the short period for preparing the referendum finding the Scots unprepared, i.e. not in the mood for independence. First he threatened the Scots by saying they would not be able “to take away the pound with them,” and then he started offering them what they had never asked for: a huge degree of autonomy, maximal expenditure control, fiscal autonomy, control of tax collection and of welfare spending.

Offering nearly everything, Cameroon started playing with emotions, by telling Edinburgh that his “heart would break” if the Scots would make “a jump into the unknown”. We will yet see about the Scots, but his words have caused malicious commentaries in many countries, not only in those that remembered the British role in the (de)gradation of state communities. In an attempt to retain their southern province, even on a thin thread, the Serbs were offering Kosovo a model “more than autonomy, less than independence” (approximately what Cameroon is now offering to the Scots), they were elaborating the models of South Tyrol and the Aland Islands. The government of Vojislav Kostunica, which included Mladjan Dinkic, was ready to offer Kosovo membership in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in exchange for remaining in the then State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, but, due to disagreement in the government during 2006, the proposal was rejected.

None of the mediators in the Vienna future status negotiations on Kosovo had seriously dealt with any of these proposals. Former Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General Martii Ahtisaari even requested, before the formal beginning of the negotiations, a meeting in person with Kostunica, which never occurred, but still announced, in a broadened composition, what would be the outcome of negotiations that hadn’t even started yet.

All the most important U.S. officials, and the then departing British premier Tony Blaire, ever since NATO’s unprovoked aerial bombardment (in which around 3,000 civilians were killed, and 250,000 Kosovo Serbs and others from non-Albanian communities in Kosovo were expelled from the southern province), were stating, on a daily basis, that Kosovo is a unique case and that it will not be a precedent. The warning of Russian President Vladimir Putin that Kosovo as “a scary precedent may provoke an entire chain of unforeseen consequences” was also not taken seriously.

And then came the launching of several ethnic hotspots, from South Ossetia, Iraq, and Syria, to the most recent ones in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. As it turned out there is no world power out there whose word can be trusted to ensure that what was allowed to them could be forbidden to others. In all these conflicts Kosovo was mentioned not once, in direct or inverse proportional connection.

The Kosovo precedent and unilateral declaration of independence of the province of Kosovo (which was recognized, one day after the declaration on 18 February 2008, by the U.S., Great Britain, France and Turkey) was also used by Russia, in recognizing, only five months later, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which seceded from Georgia. Pridnestrovie (Transdinestria) also received Russian support to separate from Moldova. And following Crimea, everything has started to become more serious. Following Maidan in Kiev and what the pro-Russian rebellions did in Eastern Ukraine, judging by everything, this country will never be the same anymore. Just as the British, regardless of whether the referendum for Scotland’s secession succeeds or not, will call, as of Thursday, their state the United Kingdom with a certain dose of discomfort.

For those who are aware that British instructors in Catalonia are training members there who are seeking secession from Spain and that these are the same ones who were training the KLA members in the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija – there will be even more discomfort. This is because they, together with their American friends and allies, led the world to becoming a place where the same rules do not apply for all.

REGIONAL PRESS

Dacic and Popovski agree on joint diplomatic offices (Republika)

The Foreign Ministers of Serbia and Macedonia, Ivica Dacic and Nikola Popovski respectively, have signed in Skopje the agreement on the rational use of resources in the joint diplomatic-consular representation offices abroad, and they have announced the soon defining of the locations and countries where those offices will be set. The two ministers have stressed that Macedonia and Serbia are friendly countries whose mutual interest is to have the best possible bilateral relations. Popovski has stated that they also discussed the economic cooperation, tourism development, Corridor 10 and the improvement of the energy and railway connections, while Dacic has assessed that Belgrade and Skopje should consider the joint appearance in the third Markets.

Macedonian citizen killed in Iraq (Dnevnik/Utrinski Vesnik/Kanal 5)
A 28-year-old Macedonian citizen Mesud Musli from Skopje, who fought on the side of the jihadists, was killed in Iraq. According to the Albanian media, unofficially, Musli was killed in Basra. Musli travelled to Germany on many occasions, and the last time he left Macedonia was on 26 April. That day, he travelled to Germany, from where he is presumed to have left to Iraq. Namely, this is the first case of a Macedonian citizen killed in Iraq. Previously, 10 Albanians from Macedonia had lost their lives in the Syria conflict.
 

Lavrov: Dangerous revision of Dayton agreement (Blic)

Revision of the Dayton peace agreement is very dangerous, stated Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, pointing out that the EU High Representative “has dictatorial authority”.

–          Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) exists as a unique country exactly because of the Dayton agreement – stated Lavrov in his interview for TV channel Centar.

As he pointed out, if in fact this agreement is being broken, there is an emerging temptation that B&H is being turned into a unitary state and those tendencies are visible in the EU position.

–          They are not satisfied because Serbs have a right of vote, that has to be taken into consideration in a process of making important decisions, such as joining the NATO, and they don’t want them to interfere with rights of Muslims, seeing them as a main nationality that embodies the Bosnian state. They will not succeed in that, stated Lavrov.

The Russian Minister stated that the B&H Presidency is constituted out of three nations that are communicating among each other but politically have a lot of problems.

–          Detrimental role is being played by the EU High Representative and his dictatorial authority, which needed to be abolished a long time ago. If the EU already supported B&H as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, than it is ridiculous keeping in effect a protectorate, stated Lavrov.

Vienna a center for radical Salafists from B&H (Tanjug)

A former member of the American intelligence NSA John Schindler suggests that Vienna became an important place for terrorists if the Islamist state (IS), adding that the Austrian capital is a central of the radical Salafists scene from B&H, Tanjug reports. Asked why the jihadists primarily originate from Bosnia, Schindler said that there is a strong link between radical Islamists in Austria and southeastern Europe since 1990’s and the war in Bosnia. “The center of Bosnian jihadists is in Vienna, not in Sarajevo, as in Austria they can be recruited more easily, and because the Bosnian intelligence acts fast against radical individuals. Increasingly extremists travel between Vienna and Bosnia, and most extremists lived in Austria where they have been radicalized.”

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Serbia Repatriates 24 War Victims’ Bodies to Kosovo (BIRN, by Marija Ristic, 15 September 2014)

The remains of the ethnic Albanians who were killed during the late 1990s war and buried in a mass grave near the Serbian town of Raska were sent back to Kosovo for identification.

The EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, said on Friday that it had received the remains of the ethnic Albanians who are believed to have been killed by Serbian forces during the conflict and their bodies then taken to the Rudnica quarry near Raska for secret burial in a mass grave.

“EULEX personnel working for the Kosovo Department of Forensic Medicine (DFM) received from the Serbian authorities the repatriated remains of 24 individuals exhumed during recent excavations in Raska,” EULEX said in a statement.

“Additional evidentiary material and other documentation were also received,” it added.

The remains will be transported to the DFM headquarters in Pristina for identification, and then handed over to the victims’ families.

This was the second repatriation of bodies exhumed from the mass grave at the Rudnica quarry. So far, a total of 40 bodies have been sent back to Kosovo.

According to Prenk Gjetaj, the head of the Kosovo government’s missing persons commission, a total of 45 bodies have been found there.

Gjetaj said that the authorities believe that the corpses are those of Kosovo Albanians who went missing during the 1998-99 conflict in Rrezalla, a village in the Skenderaj/Srbice area.

However DNA tests have yet to substantiate this suspicion.

The area near Rudnica was first probed in 2010, after the Serbian war crimes prosecution, in cooperation with the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, announced that there could be a mass grave in Raska containing the bodies of at least 250 Albanians, although nothing was found until last year.

There are still around 1,700 people listed as missing as a result of the Kosovo conflict.

Kosovo Albanian Prisoner Recalls Beating by KLA (BIRN, by Nektar Zogjani, 15 September 2014)

A witness told the trial of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s ‘Drenica Group’ cell, accused of assaulting prisoners during the 1998-99 war, that he was severely beaten by the defendants.

The protected witness codenamed ‘Witness A’ told the court on Monday that he was seriously assaulted in captivity by Pristina’s former ambassador to Albania and Kosovo Security Force ex-commander Sylejman Selimi and other members of the Drenica Group.

Witness A said the former KLA fighters beat him “because they said I had cooperated with Serbia” during Belgrade’s conflict with the guerrilla force.

He described the men who beat him as “merciless”.

Selimi and six other former KLA fighters are on trial for allegedly torturing and mistreating prisoners at a detention centre in Likovc/Likovac in 1998.

According to the indictment raised by EU prosecutors, Selimi “in his capacity as a KLA member and as a person exercising control over the Likovc detention centre in co-perpetration with Sami Lushtaku, Avni Zabeli and Sahit Jashari, violated the bodily integrity and the health of an undefined number of Albanian civilians” who were being held there.

In September 1998, he is alleged to have abused ‘Witness A’ by “beating him with fists and wooden sticks”.

He is also alleged to have “ordered Witness B, another civilian held in the Likovc detention centre, to repeatedly strike Witness A with a wooden plank and pinched Witness A’s genitals with an iron tool, subsequently dragging him on the floor with it”.

Besides ex-ambassador Selimi, another prominent politician and former KLA member, Sami Lushtaku, is charged with mistreating other prisoners and killing one man at the KLA detention centre.

Born in Drenica in 1970, Selimi was a KLA commander in the Drenica area in 1998-99, and commanded the Kosovo Protection Corps from 2006 to 2009 and the Kosovo Security Force from 2009 to 2011, before becoming ambassador to Tirana.

In May this year, he was cleared of war crimes over the alleged beating and torture of two women during the war in the former Serbian province.

Lavrov warns against revision of Dayton Agreement (ITAR-TASS, 13 September 2014)

MOSCOW. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Saturday against attempts to revise the Dayton Agreement which ensure the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“It would be very dangerous to revise the Dayton Agreement as Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) exists as a single state largely owing to this document,” Lavrov told TV Tsentr’s Pravo Znat programme /The Right to Know/.

“There is a very complicated formula: three state-forming peoples /Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats/ and two entities, as they are referred to in the Agreement – the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. Neither Croats nor Bosniaks have their own entity for they share it while being two state-forming peoples along with a third one, the Serbs. This formula largely reflected history, but also the Europeans’ desire not to leave the Muslims – Bosniaks – alone as this is a very narrow strip of land,” he said.

The Dayton Agreement gives each of the three ethnic groups the right of veto within Bosnia-Herzegovina’s political system.

“If it is broken now, this will create a temptation to turn Bosnia-Herzegovina into a unitary state. These tendencies can be seen now, including in the European Union’s position. They are displeased by the fact that the Serbs have a voice, which must be heeded when crucial decisions are made, including those concerning accession to international organisations such as NATO, and they do not want to infringe upon the rights of the Muslims who they think must be the main ethnic group embodying the Bosnian state. This won’t work,” Lavrov said.

He admitted that the system of government in Bosnia-Herzegovina is “very complex”. “The presidium is made up for three persons: a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb. They communicate with each other but run into lots of political problems. The EU supreme representative plays a harmful role as he possesses dictatorial powers, which should have been abolished a long time ago. If the EU supported Bosnia-Herzegovina’s election as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, it would be absurd to leave it under protectorate,” the minister said.

“We think these powers must be removed so that the Bosnians could work out agreements themselves, primarily where it concerns common interests to avoid situations, where they would be pushed into structures or partnerships that are unacceptable for one of the tree state-forming ethnic groups,” Lavrov said.

Scottish referendum raises Bosnian Serbs’ independence hopes (AFP, 15 September 2014)

Bosnian Serbs are closely watching Scotland’s independence referendum, hoping if Scots vote to break away from Britain it would set a precedent that could boost their own chances of proclaiming a separate state.

After Crimea split from Ukraine and joined Russia following a disputed referendum in March, and with Scotland eyeing independence in Thursday’s referendum, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-run entity Republika Srpska (RS) has not hesitated to evoke the spectre of separation.

“We are following what is going on in Italy (South Tyrol), in Scotland and even in Catalonia. These are crucial experiences for the RS,” Milorad Dodik said recently.

In multi-ethnic Bosnia, however, with the bloody legacy of its 1992-1995 war during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, observers say talk of independence also raises the danger of a new armed conflict.

The Dayton peace accord that ended Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war created two almost equal and highly autonomous entities, Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, linked by a loose central government in charge of foreign matters, finance and defence.

The Serbs had boycotted Bosnia’s 1991 referendum to break away from Yugoslavia which was successful thanks to the votes of Muslims and Croats.

But Bosnia’s proclamation of independence in 1992 came at the price of a brutal war pitting Serbs against Muslims and Croats that claimed more than 100,000 lives.

To this day many Serbs have never really accepted the new post-war Bosnian state, despite the level of autonomy they have in Republika Srpska.

“If a referendum was organised tomorrow, most of the Serbs would be in favour of independence,” said Milos Solaja, professor of international relations at the University of Banja Luka in the Bosnian Serb entity’s capital.

“Republika Srpska has gradually become a solid political entity that most of its inhabitants, Serbs, identify with,” Solaja said.

While he thinks secession “is not realistic at this moment,” he added that “Republika Srpska is de facto already a state given its huge statehood attributes.”

– ‘Extremely dangerous idea’ –

Rumblings of independence also come as Bosnia heads toward general elections on October 12.

Dodik has made it part of his campaign speeches.

“The goal of my politics is that we become less an entity and more a state,” he said last Friday at an election rally.

“This is our protector and he will lead us to independence!,” shouted Ranko Stanojevic, a fierce Dodik supporter in the crowd.

But the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Valentin Inzko, said the country’s constitution “allows no possibility for either entity to secede.”

“The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina are enshrined in the Dayton Peace Agreement and guaranteed under international law” so contesting it would be “a pointless exercise,” he said.

Dodik’s statements have pushed the main Muslim party of Democratic Action (SDA) to declare that Bosnia “will never be put into question.”

According to a political analyst for Radio Free Europe, Dragan Stavljanin, it all amounts to electoral rhetoric, though he added there would be a “much stronger” reaction if the threat of independence became more concrete.

“I believe that it could not happen without a new war in Bosnia,” he said.

He added that such a conflict would risk attracting “Muslim extremists” who, as they did in the 1990s, would come to help fellow Muslims in Bosnia.

Hajrudin Caluk, a Muslim and Bosnian war veteran in Sarajevo, said that “Serb separatist politics paralyse the functioning of the state.”

But to split Bosnia into two states, one of which would be Muslim-dominated, would turn the Muslim community into “the Palestinians of the Balkans,” he said.

A European diplomat in Sarajevo, who asked not to be named, said the situations in Bosnia and the United Kingdom were “completely different” as the September 18 Scottish referendum was to be held with the consent of the British government.

“Not only is the idea of redrawing Bosnia’s borders unrealistic but it is extremely dangerous,” the diplomat said.

Macedonia Opposition Spurns Plan to Clean Electoral Roll (BIRN, 15 September 2014)

Macedonia’s main opposition party has refused to take part in the latest move of the State Electoral Commission, DIK, to clean the electoral roll of fictitious voters, insisting only a proper head count will suffice.

Macedonia’s main opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM – which has boycotted parliament since the April elections, claiming the government parties won them by fraud – declined to take part in Friday’s DIK session, which proposed door-to-door checkups on whether voters are who they say they are.

“There is no purpose in discussing something… that we think should be discussed between the government and the opposition in order to ensure the minimum conditions for fair and democratic elections,” said Damjan Mancevski, the SDSM vice-president and member of the DIK’s task group that convened on Friday.

The DIK considered whether – and how – to check opposition allegations that the electoral roll contains numerous fictitious voters, added to the list in several municipalities in order to tip the election scales in the government’s favour.

“The plan is to check up on the spot. The proposed action plan involves several smaller pilot municipalities where teams would go from door to door and check voters at their addresses, whether they indeed live there and have biometrical IDs,” the head of the body, Bedredin Ibrahimi, said.

The electoral roll has been a matter of controversy in Macedonia for some time. The OSCE, which has monitored Macedonian elections in the past, has described it as unusually large for a country of just over 2 million people.

In the 2013 local elections, as well as in the April 2014 early general and presidential elections, allegations of irregularities linked to the electoral roll marred the vote.

The Social Democrats accused the ruling VMRO DPMNE party of rigging the elections in Skopje and other areas by permitting organised voting by ethnic Macedonians from Albania. They were allegedly given fake residency permits in Macedonia by the Police Ministry and brought in to vote.

The party accused the police, which provides the data on voters to the Election Commission, of playing the key role in the scheme. It also said previous clean-ups of the electoral roll were not done properly. The police denied the claims.

The issue was raised again by the SDSM after it lost the April elections. The SDSM refused to recognize the results and has also refused to take up its seats in parliament.

The party has set five conditions to return to parliament: the formation of a caretaker government; clearer separation of party and state activities; better regulation of the media; improvements to the electoral laws; carrying out national head count to determine how many voters there are in Macedonia.

The party said a census was necessary in order to reduce the possibility of the ruling parties adding fictitious voters to the electoral roll.

Macedonia has not held a completed census since 2002. The last attempt in October 2011 ended in fiasco, and was scrapped shortly after it began due to ethnic disputes.

Ethnic Albanian parties claimed that the Macedonian majority on the census commission had arranged the criteria in order to underestimate the number of Albanians in the country.

Macedonian parties on the other hand argued that the census was being falsified in ethnic Albanian-dominated areas in order to exaggerate the true number of Albanians.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev met for talks on defusing the political crisis only once in June. The talks have been on hold since then.

The new clean-up plan comes ahead of the European Commission’s annual report on the country’s progress towards EU, which is to be published this autumn.

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Media summaries are produced for the internal use of the United Nations Office in Belgrade, UNMIK and UNHQ. The contents do not represent anything other than a selection of articles likely to be of interest to a United Nations readership.