LOCAL PRESS
Dialogue to resume next week? (Novosti)
Progress reached by the Belgrade and Pristina delegations at the last round of the Brussels dialogue could give rise for organizing a new high-level meeting as early as next week. According to Novosti, Pristina has rejected the nearly harmonized text on the Union of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) over two words. They found disputable the formulation for the employees in the ZSO to have the state of state officials, on which Serbia insisted. The cabinet of the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini could not confirm whether Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Isa Mustafa will receive an invitation for Brussels.
Djuric: Contradictory statements from Pristina (Blic)
It was seen during the talks in Brussels that Kosovo Albanian representatives are not ready to reach an agreement, and Pristina’s statements about the latest round of the dialog are contradictory, said the Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric. In comment to the statement of Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa that the companies and property in the province belong to Kosovo, and are not subject to negotiations with Belgrade, Djuric has noted that those words are in discord with the agreement on telecommunications that was signed by the Pristina delegation. The document clearly reports that the entire property of the Telekom Serbia in Kosovo stays forever their property, before the authorities in Pristina and before the international community, Djuric emphasized. He said he did not know when the next round of the dialogue would take place, but added that the Serbian side was always ready for talks and finding solutions.
Dacic: Fourth draft resolution on Srebrenica prepared (RTS)
In anticipation of the fourth version of the draft resolution on Srebrenica, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic told the morning news of Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) that the previous, third version didn’t differ much from the initial text, adding that the main novelty refers to the part that concerns Dayton. “It seems to us that generally the attempt of Great Britain is for human suffering in the region of former Yugoslavia to be reduced to one number of victims,” notes Dacic. He repeats that it is problematic that the entire issue of the war is reduced to Srebrenica and wonders why there was no resolution for the tenth or 15th anniversary of Srebrenica. Dacic points out that in the formal-legal sense Serbia is not a factor that decides and adds that Serbia has not received an invitation to attend the Security Council session, while B&H has been invited to attend even though it doesn’t’ have a clear position on the resolution. “We don’t have a position on this yet. First we need to know the procedure on how the Security Council operates. Consultations were held yesterday again but there was no agreement,” says Dacic. He recalls that Russia has its own draft resolution, and points out that the fourth version is also ready and he expects Serbia to receive it soon. Dacic considers there are several possible outcomes on the Srebrenica issue – giving up the resolution, agreement of both sides and no consent on Srebrenica. He notes that it would be good to either reach essential compromise or to give up the passing of the resolution. In any case, the situation is confusing because the outcome is unknown, says Dacic, underlining that such an approach doesn’t contribute to true reconciliation, because it stirs up divisions and conflicts in the region. Speaking about the negotiations in Brussels, Minister Dacic notes that for the time being it is unknown when the dialogue will continue, but that it is obvious there will not be a long break as expected, because Serbia’s membership negotiations depend on the dialogue. He reminds that it is clear that Pristina is responsible for not reaching an agreement, because there was no desire to make a step forward. Asked whether he expects pressures, Dacic says that if there needs to be pressure, then they should be on the Pristina side. “Everyone who thinks to reach something by pressuring Belgrade forgets that things in Serbia have changed and that Serbia is not the side that cheats at the table,” concludes Dacic.
REGIONAL PRESS
Ivanic: In this environment, unrealistic for Serb representative to go to Srebrenica (BHRT)
Mladen Ivanic, Chair of the B&H Presidency, appearing on Interview 20 on BHRT said that in such an environment it is unrealistic for him to participate in the observation of the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide. “I was there ten years ago, I did my humane duty, and now after everything that has happened I don’t know whether it is realistic for a Serb representative to go,” he said. He has still not decided whether he would pay respects to victims in front of the B&H Presidency building, or where the procession with remains will go. “I have no intention of ingratiating anyone, I will do what I have decided is right, and no one can accuse me of not showing respect to the victims,” said Ivanic.
Bosic: Dodik to explain what will happen after referendum (Klix.ba)
The Presidency of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) discussed the current political situation in the RS and B&H. The president of the party Mladen Bosic said at a press conference that they are concerned about the situation, adding that tensions in the RS and B&H are increasing. The SDS has discussed the situation regarding the resolution on Srebrenica in the United Nations and the announcement by RS President Milorad Dodik that he will call a referendum on B&H Court and Prosecution authority on the RS territory. Bosic said that there are too many open questions, too many unexplained things at this point, and thus they cannot decisively take position on the referendum. “First of all, we ask Dodik to explain what will happen after the referendum. In which way he plans to turn the will of the people into reality”, said Bosic. “We are committed to changing the way of functioning of the B&H Court and Prosecution, but we do not want to bring RS and Serbs in a position to go through the adventure, which can have serious consequences.”
Novalic: FB&H will borrow money from commercial banks (FTV)
B&H has been left without IMF money and will have to find alternative ways of financing, including private banks, FB&H Prime Minister Fadil Novalic said. At the session of the FB&H Social-Economic Council on Wednesday Novalic said that “the economic situation in the Federation is becoming complicated”, and that “we will have to find other sources of funding in order to pay the debts and citizens’ income”. “We have adopted a budget in which 200 million KM had been foreseen from IMF funding. Since there is no fourth IMF arrangement, then we will have to look for other sources: commercial banks and more treasury bills,” said Novalic, FTV reported. To remind, the last IMF arrangement expired recently, and B&H authorities failed to reach agreement with IMF on the new one. It is well known that borrowing money from private banks is the worst option for any country to deal with financial problems. Issuing treasury bills and bonds is also a way of borrowing money from private investors.
Cvijanovic: Quasi-diplomacy in B&H exceeded all limits (Srna)
The RS Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic said that the statement by the Ambassador of Austria to B&H Martin Palmer, who called the entities of B&H “quasi-provinces”, is proof that quasi-diplomacy in B&H exceeded all limits. Cvijanovic pointed out that this is the case where, as usually, foreign ambassadors work to destabilize rather than stabilize B&H. Asked by Srna to comment on Palmer’s assertion that “representatives of one part of the country, one of the two quasi-provinces” decided not to sign the reform agenda which caused, as he said, a loan not to get realized, Cvijanovic proposed to Ambassador Pamer to ask the World Bank “are they comfortable with the fact that for the first time in a history some level of the executive power, blocked the ratification of the agreement, like the B&H level did”. “The World Bank should be asked is it worth to insert into the agenda the arrangements for which they know, in advance, that are going to get blocked by the same level of B&H,” Cvijanovic told the Austrian Ambassador to B&H.
Gratz: If you’ve forgotten, Kutlesa is still Council of Ministers secretary-general (Oslobodjenje)
Dennis Gratz, delegate to the Federation of B&H parliament, warned that Article 6 of the law on the Council of Ministers, in which it states that at least one member of the Council of Ministers or the secretary-general must be from the ranks of the Others, or citizens who do not declare themselves members of a constituent people. “Zvonimir Kutlesa is still the secretary-general, and among the ministers in the Council of Ministers there is no one from the Others. Three months will soon have passed from the first session, and it appears that everyone has decided to keep quiet on this. Is it that someone wants tomorrow the forces that are working to destroy the state government use this argument and challenge the legality and legitimacy of the Council of Ministers? What is the general attitude of the ruling coalition toward these positions? Is the concept of ‘agreement of the peoples’ accepted by everyone, and citizens again put on the margins,” said Gratz. “The B&H Council of Ministers must respond on this issue as soon as possible. They left it an open story about whether they are members of the Council of Ministers or deputy ministers. However, the earlier practice indicates to us that there is no dispute. The last two convocations they had ministers from the Others. Now has it descended from the agenda for pragmatic reasons? This is not the only hole in the practice of the Council of Ministers, which creates problems with appointments, and then in decision-making,” concluded Gratz.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
US, Britain, France must explain Srebrenica airstrike cancellation (DutchNews.nl, 1 July 2015)
The Netherlands wants the US, Britain and France to clarify claims that they decided to cancel airstrikes on Serbian targets during the Yugoslavian civil war without telling the Dutch. Dutch peacekeepers were in charge in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica which fell to Serb forces on July 11, 1995. The Serbs then massacred up to 8,000 men and boys, some of whom were sent out of the Dutch military compound. US documents shown in an Argos television documentary on Tuesday revealed the decision to cancel UN airstrikes was taken by the US, France and Britain in May 1995, but no one told the Dutch. This failure of the UN to provide air support to the Dutch peacekeepers in the face of the Serbian onslaught has never before been properly explained. The information in the documentary is based on hundreds of US documents made public in 2013. Can’t ignore Defence minister Jeanine Hennis said the claims in the programme are ‘notable’ and that she would investigate further. ‘I must and will discuss this with our allies,’ she said. ‘I cannot ignore what I saw [on television] yesterday.’ The Dutch troops in Srebrenica, known as Dutchbat, asked nine times for air support but the UN did not finally agree until July 10, Joris Voorhoeve, defence minister at the time, said earlier this year. He told RTL news that UN officials said 40 aircraft would be sent to knock out the Serbian artillery. However, this did not happen. Four aircraft came on July 11 but this was not only too late, but made life extremely dangerous for the 40,000 people in the enclave, he said.
Bosnia: Cradle of Jihad (BBC, by Mark Urban, 2 July 2015)
Back in the 1990s something happened in central Bosnia-Herzegovina that inspired people to this day and helps explain why that country now has more men fighting in Syria and Iraq (over 300), as a proportion of its population, than most in Europe. The formation of a “Mujahideen Battalion” in 1992, composed mainly of Arab volunteers in central Bosnia, was a landmark. Today the dynamic of jihad has been reversed and it is Bosnians who are travelling to Arab lands. “There is a war between the West and Islam,” says Aimen Dean, who, as a young Saudi Arabian volunteer, travelled to fight in central Bosnia in 1994. “Bosnia gave the modern jihadist movement that narrative. It is the cradle.” Conventional wisdom holds that it was the fight against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s that created the modern notion of jihad or “holy war”. Aimen Dean’s point is that the West and the Salafists (or adherents to a strict form of Islam going back to observance in the Middle Ages) were on the same side in Afghanistan, but became enemies in Bosnia. At first, in 1992, it was just a few dozen militants who went to defend their co-religionists in Bosnia, as Serbian paramilitaries drove them from their homes in the west and east of the country. But it was in early 1993, when it became a three-way fight against Catholic Croatians as well as the Serbs, that the Mujahideen Battalion swelled to the hundreds and started to hunt non-believers more actively. After Croatian militias massacred around 120 Bosnians in Ahmici in April 1993, the Mujahideen were involved in numerous reprisals. At Guca Gora monastery two months later, they drove out nearly 200 Croatians, who were evacuated by British United Nations troops. They then entered the chapel, desecrating its religious art, and filmed themselves doing it. British troops fought the Mujahideen Battalion at Guca Gora and elsewhere in the summer of 1993 – the opening shots of that army’s fight against jihadism. Vaughan Kent-Payne, then a major commanding a company of British troops involved in those battles, says the foreign fighters were “way more aggressive” than local Bosnian troops, frequently opening fire on the UN’s white-painted vehicles. In the nearby town of Travnik, that had been almost equally Muslim, Croatian and Serb before the war, the foreigners helped drive out thousands, and tried to impose Sharia law on those who remained. They were also involved in kidnapping local Christians, and beheaded one, Dragan Popovic, forcing other captives to kiss his severed head. The Popovic case eventually went to court, so the facts have been well established. But the Mujahideen Battalion was also suspected in many others including the kidnap and murder of aid workers as well as the execution of 20 Croatian prisoners. The foreigners never amounted to more than one per cent of the fighting force at the disposal of the Sarajevo government, despite the frequent claims of the Serb and Croatian media to have spotted Islamic fanatics from abroad just about everywhere. From an early stage the Mujahideen also started recruiting Bosnians and, by 1995, in the final months of the war, the incorporation of several hundred local men allowed the outfit to be expanded into the Mujahideen Brigade, around 1,500 strong. By the summer of 1993, the Sarajevo government was starting to wake up to the potentially toxic effect of these jihadists on their image as a multi-ethnic, secular republic. So, in an attempt to control it, the battalion was placed under the command of III Corps, the Bosnian Army formation headquartered in the central city of Zenica. Its commander at the time, Brigadier General Enver Hadzihasanovic, ended up facing a war crimes trial in the Hague on charges of overall responsibility for some of the Mujahideen’s behaviour, including the Travnik kidnappings. In the end, the prosecution dropped those charges, but the general served two years, having been found guilty of having (Bosnian) troops under him who had abused prisoners. From the outset, the general had felt the Mujahideen were a dubious military asset, and wrote a secret message to army chiefs in 1993, saying: “My opinion is that behind [the Mujahideen] there are some high-ranking politicians and religious leaders.” Reflecting now on the jihadists’ participation in the war he adds, “they didn’t help Bosnia at all, on the contrary, I think they did Bosnia a disservice.” However, as the general’s 1993 memo implied, there were some leaders, including Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia’s President at the time, who were happy to welcome the foreign fighters, partly as a way of keeping wealthy Arab donors sweet. When the war ended, under the Dayton Peace Accord, all foreign fighters had to leave, and they were duly ordered out in 1996. Remembering that day, Aimen Dean says there were high emotions, shouting and tears at the Mujahideen base: “And the reason is because everyone was there hoping to die as a martyr. Now that chance was taken from them.” Hundreds of Mujahideen went from Bosnia to Chechnya, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Among their alumni were two of the 9/11 hijackers, the murderer of American hostage Daniel Pearl and numerous other al-Qaeda cadres. More than 300 of the foreigners remained in Bosnia, buried in its soil, a testimony to the heavy casualties taken by the unit. A few dozen Arabs who had met local women or were fearful of going home also managed to stay, by taking Bosnian citizenship. Today also there are suggestions in Sarajevo that the SDA – the late President Izetbegovic’s party – is not taking a tough enough line against foreign fighters. Only this time they are the hundreds of Bosnians who are choosing to fight in Iraq and Syria. There is “a recalcitrance from more radical elements of the SDA” about condemning those who go to the Middle East to fight, says one Sarajevo diplomat. In fairness, the Sarajevo government has taken action to ban recruiting for foreign wars (in the name of any religion or cause) and has mounted numerous raids to disrupt extremist networks and arrest those who have returned from fighting in the Middle East. However, its critics note that for years it turned a blind eye to those Arab Mujahideen who remained in Bosnia but continued to agitate, and has allowed several communities of home-grown Bosnian Salafists to emerge in recent years. Among those who link what is happening now with the 1990s are Fikret Hadzic, who has been charged with fighting for the so-called Islamic State in Syria. He met our BBC team but said that legal restrictions prevented him giving an on-camera interview, however he was happy to be quoted in print. Abdic had joined the Mujahideen unit in 1994. For years after the war he worked as a driver and mechanic before deciding he needed to join the fight against “the Assad Shia regime” in Syria. While he insisted he was not a member of IS, and disapproved of its methods, Hadzic told us that before returning from Syria last year he had met some Bosnian members of the organisation who appeared in an IS video that was released this June. Other Bosnians who served with that unit back in the war include the leader of an important Salafist mosque in Sarajevo, and Bilal Bosnic, who is in detention awaiting trial. Bosnic is charged with recruiting fighters for the Islamic State group. With IS now trying to start a “new front for the Caliphate” in the Balkans, there are many who worry that Bosnia is vulnerable because it remains so weak and fragmented, even two decades after its war ended.
Macedonian Opposition Chief Dares Courts to Arrest Him (BIRN, by Sinisa Jakov Marusic, 1 July 2015)
Opposition leader Zoran Zaev upped the ante with the authorities, daring them to apprehend him and saying he will not respect further court orders concerning his ‘politically motivated’ charges.
Social Democrat leader Zaev said he would stop appearing in court each Monday as ordered and will not show up for trial hearings in the cases against him, inviting the courts – which he accuses of working under a political diktat – to put him in detention. “I do not recognize the judiciary as an independent authority… It is under the complete control of [Prime Minister] Nikola Gruevski”, Zaev said on Wednesday. “With this announcement, the court is obliged to immediately set detention and apprehend me. As of today I am expecting this court decision,” Zaev told cheering supporters at the press conference, adding that he might be reached either in his party’s HQ or in the opposition camp set in front of the government building. On Monday the Skopje Criminal Court ruled that the trial should proceed in the so-called “coup” coup where Zaev is accused of trying to blackmail the Prime Minister. Zaev says the charges against him are absurd because “demanding early elections and [the formation of] a caretaker government” is well in the domain of the opposition leader. In January, Prime Minister Gruevski used a nationwide TV address to accuse Zaev of attempting a coup. The Social Democrat leader was later charged with “blackmail and and violence against top state officials” and ordered to surrender his passport. Gruevski said Zaev had threatened to publish compromising data from wiretapped conversations of state officials – that he allegedly obtained from unnamed foreign secret services – unless a caretaker government was formed that included his own party. The prosecution pressed charges against four other people. Three are in detention while one is at large. Zaev’s press conference comes against a backdrop of a deep political crisis caused by the opposition release of official’s illegal surveillance tapes and amid EU and US-mediated efforts to bring both sides to agree on a transitional government and early elections. Zaev started releasing the tapes of government conversations in February. The opposition says Gruevski and his cousin, the recently resigned secret police chief Saso Mijalkov, orchestrated the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people, including government ministers. Zaev insists the material comes from sources in the Macedonian secret services. The released tapes point to widespread interference in elections and in the work of judges and prosecutors, corruption, the attempted cover-up of a murder and more. Gruevski said that the tapes were made for “foreign services” without specifying whose they were, and were given to the opposition to destabilize the country.
Since the surveillance affair first broke, Zaev has been charged with two other cases, about revealing state secrets and soliciting bribes. As well as the “coup” case, Zaev is charged with revealing state secrets after playing tapes that suggested Mijalkov fixed a hefty cut from a procurement of police equipment. Zaev was also charged with soliciting bribes from a businessman in his home town of Strumica, which he says is all part of the same political set-up. The court in this case is to decide whether the trial should proceed.
