LOCAL PRESS

Dacic: We will not support Luksic in the UN (Danas)

Serbia will not support Montenegro’s candidate for the UN Secretary-General Igor Luksic, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic tells Danas. On the other side, the Montenegrin government says in regard to whether it expects Serbia’s support that it is too early to discuss this since the nomination process has not been completed yet. “In any case, we will also use this candidacy to strengthen ties with everybody, primarily with neighbors,” Danas was told. Belgrade’s announcement that it will not support Podgorica’s candidate in the race for the UN post doesn’t come as a surprise since Montenegro had recently voted for Kosovo to be admitted in UNESCO. Still, Dacic tells Danas that withholding support to Luksic has nothing to do with the voting in UNESCO. Dacic told the press yesterday that the official nomination process only now begins and will last at least until next mid-year, which, as he underlined, means that the UN Secretary-General will be elected in the second half of 2016. “There are certainly names, but when we speak about that, it should be taken into account that Serbia doesn’t decide on this but the permanent members of the Security Council and the Security Council in general, so that no decisions have been made yet. We discussed this several times, but it is certain that we will have a clear stand in the following months,” said Dacic.

Nikolic with Davutoglu on Kosovo and Russia (Danas)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has told Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that it is especially painful for Belgrade when friends, like Ankara, promote Kosovo’s independence, Nikolic’s press service stated. Davutoglu invited the Serbian President to assist Turkey in the dispute with Russia, which was accepted with pleasure, reads the statement. Nikolic said that Serbia has been negotiating with Pristina and investing maximum efforts for all residents in Kosovo and Metohija to live in peace and stability. Everybody needs to assist that effort in an open and transparent manner, said Nikolic. Davutoglu positively assessed the Belgrade-Pristina negotiations, voicing readiness to help the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, reads the statement.

Djuric: Resumption of Brussels negotiations in January (RTS/Tanjug)

The Brussels negotiations will resume in January, the Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric announced, adding that the topics will be negotiated. “I expect the dialogue to continue in January at all levels, we are continuing our fight,” Djuric told the press after the meeting with Kosovo Serb representatives in Belgrade. Asked about speculations in the Kosovo media that Serbia is blocking Austria to apply for the dialing code for Kosovo, Djuric said that Serbia respects the agreement on telecommunications and all of its elements and that everything that concerned Serbia has been done. “The Kosovo media report that the Serbs should be blamed for the attack in Gorazdevac, so the same thing is with the respect of this agreement. We respect the agreement, but nobody understands what they are doing,” he said. Djuric said that in 2016 the negotiations with Pristina should resolve in a sustainable way the issues relating to the position of Serbs, their property, cultural heritage, the status and property of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Speaking about the plans for 2016, that Serbia would strive to table the topics that Pristina had refused to discuss so far, which relate to the position of Serbs, their property, rights and quality of life. In the coming year, the Community of Serb Municipalities must become a reality and an efficient service to Serbian citizens in Kosovo and Metohija, he said, calling on Serbs to demonstrate unity.

Synod to examine Nikolic’s proposal on position of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija (Novosti)

The Vatican model for the position of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija mentioned by President Tomislav Nikolic is only an initial paradigm so relations between the Serbian Church and the interim institutions in Kosovo and Metohija could be regulated, while the church should define concrete and acceptable principles, Novosti was told in the cabinet of the Serbian President. The Chairperson of the Serbian parliamentary Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun tells Novosti that it is obvious there is no political will in Pristina to approach the resolution of this problem, as indicated by the fact that the Albanians are presenting Serbian monasteries as their own and their attempt for Kosovo to become an UNESCO member.

Kosovo didn’t receive dialing code since Pristina didn’t give “Telekom Serbia” license for fixed and mobile telephony (Politika)

The Serbian government states that the Brussels agreement envisages that the statute of the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) was supposed to be completed by 15 December at the latest, but that because of the obstruction of the Albanian side, primarily the protests of the radical opposition, this didn’t occur. Sources from the Serbian government reject any notion that new talks between two prime ministers Aleksandar Vucic and Isa Mustafa could be conducted on the formation of the ZSO at the end of January next year in Brussels. The Albanian side has not implemented much from the Brussels agreement. One of the non-implemented issues is the license for fixed and mobile telephony in the southern province to “Telekom”. This is the reason why Belgrade didn’t give permission to Austria to apply for the 303 dialing code for Kosovo, which was part of the Belgrade-Pristina agreement. “The license is important since Telekom would be operating illegally without it. We want ensure that Telekom operates legally on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija. We also want for calls from Kosovo towards Serbia proper to be treated as local and not international calls,” the Serbian government states. Belgrade finds it very important that it is written in the official request in the footnote that this is a geographical code that part of our country will receive with Serbia’s consent. “Serbia must be mentioned in the document. Without our country Kosovo and Metohija cannot receive a dialing code, since the province is not a member of the United Nations,” states the Serbian government.

REGIONAL PRESS

Nikolic aware of plans to topple Dodik (RTRS)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic says he learned of a plan to topple the current Republika Srpska (RS) government by toppling the entity’s President Milorad Dodik. “Unfortunately, to a great extent, what is going on now was also used in the confrontation with Serbia in the case of Slobodan Milosevic: the problem is personalized and some say that all will be good if Dodik leaves, but nothing will be good,” Nikolic said in an interview for the Banja Luka-based RTRS.  Nikolic said that Serbia is focused on the RS without any desire to quarrel with those who are not that entity. The Serbian President said that he learned from foreign diplomats of attempts to destroy the RS and warned that the entity is under major threat. “The interest, the fate and the survival of the Serb Republic must be more important than anything else, no matter who is in power,” Nikolic said.  He added that “diplomats openly told him something is happening” and that there was a tendency to put the RS before a fait accompli – “to accept absolutely everything that is being suggested or its powers will continue to be reduced, with the participation of the B&H Constitutional Court”.  The Serbian President warned that nothing will be as it should be unless the opposition political bloc (in the entity) realizes that the threat to the RS is great.

“Directives to bring down RS come from the international community and are being carried out from the Federation,” said Nikolic.

Cavic: Serbian President supports Dodik’s lies (Bosna danas)

Dragan Cavic, leader of the NDP party, said it is a “very unpleasant thing” that Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic supports Milorad Dodik’s lies. Nikolic said yesterday that he has been informed about the alleged plan by “international community” to overthrow Republika Srpska Government and President Milorad Dodik. Dodik has been claiming repeatedly that there is such plan. Cavic said Nikolic’s statement presents the worst kind of interference into the RS internal relations. “Someone who says something like that has to have evidence, and those who are allegedly involved in such conspiracy should be prosecuted, because that is a criminal offense,” Cavic said. He added that representatives of political parties in RS already discussed this issue with the RS Police Minister Dragan Lukac who said he has no information about such plan. Cavic concluded that Nikolic’s claims are completely unfounded.

SBB to enter Council of Ministers, but Radoncic will not be a minister (Nezavisne)

The Alliance for a Better Future (SBB) will enter the B&H Council of Ministers, which will be completed in January, as announced today by the president of the SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic at the New Year’s conference of this party in Sarajevo. Izetbegovic said that he met with the leader of SBB Fahrudin Radoncic at the working lunch, at which they agreed the entry of politicians from this party in the highest executive authority of our country. However, added Izetbegovic, Radoncic will not be one of the ministers. Regarding recent statements of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, on the announcement of his arrival on celebration of the 9th of January, Izetbegovic stated that he believes that Vucic has good intentions. “There will be oscillations in these relationships. We will continue to lead these countries in the direction of interest of the citizens of these two countries. Yesterday I received calls from Vucic and Davutoglu for three or four times, to encourage the arrival of Zvizdic at the joint meeting,” said Izetbegovic. As for the coordination mechanism, Izetbegovic said that it has not been fully agreed yet, since the proposal they have on the table seems too complicated and does not guarantee an effective mechanism.

Izetbegovic on the issue of merging of Cantons (Klix)

At a New Year’s press conference of the SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic said that he is expecting proposals of HDZ B&H on reorganization of Mostar soon, while they should wait with the merger of cantons until 2018. He emphasized that he is expecting from the HDZ B&H to propose certain solutions and to come out to meet the Bosniaks with some kind of “positive discrimination” because they are minority in that city. Izetbegovic is expecting the proposal of HDZ B&H in the upcoming days. SDA, on the other hand, have certain solutions related to a verdict Sejdic-Finci. “One thing is certain, we will not go for the separation of Mostar, or the formation of some kind of third entity,” said Izetbegovic. Regarding the merger of cantons, Izetbegovic said that it is something that is quite realistic and necessary for this country. “We have more than 600 parliamentarians and 167 ministers, with everything that is accompanying it.  More than 80 % of these are in the Federation of B&H, while the RS is simpler and better organized part of B&H. It is quite logical to unite the two governments and the two parliaments. For example, if we merge BPK with CS or if we unite ZDK and BPK Gorazde with CS. Look what a simplification we would get if these 2 cantons would rely on the strength of Sarajevo,” said Izetbegovic. However, he noted that these changes would need to be done after the election in 2018. “Now some people took certain positions and it will be very difficult to change it. After 2018, there will be new appointments and by then we can do a very logical simplification,” said Izetbegovic. Izetbegovic noted that he launched this idea to the public so that everyone can say what’s wrong with this kind of simplification. “There is no third entity or ethnically pure territories if, for example, we connect the CBC and the HNC. Here you have 60 or 70 % of Croats who would live together with the Bosniaks,” said Izetbegovic.

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Turkey attempted to start war between NATO and Russia, Serbian president claims (Hurriyet Daily News, 30 December 2015)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has claimed Turkey attempted to start a war between NATO and Russia with the Nov. 24 downing of Russian warplane near the Syrian border. Speaking to Russian RIA Novosti news agency, Nikolic said the downing of the Russian warplane was an attempt to involve NATO and Russia into a conflict with Syria. “It was an attempt to involve the two powerful forces into one big military conflict with Syria,” Nikolic said. He also reminded that Turkish warplanes had violated Greek airspace many times but Greece did not down them, highlighting that such responses have serious consequences, as Turkey should have known.

Nikolic’s remarks came after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s visit to Serbia on Dec. 29. His office said Davutoğlu had voiced the country’s desire for the normalization of relations with Moscow during the meeting.

Montenegro Cabinet to Push for Vote of Confidence Over NATO Membership (Sputnik, 29 December 2015)
BELGRADE — Montenegro’s Cabinet of Ministers will submit to the parliament a request for a vote of confidence within two weeks, amid a dispute considering the country joining NATO, according to a statement on the government’s website. “[Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic] announced that the Cabinet will submit to the Parliament of Montenegro a request for a vote of confidence in the Government. The Prime Minister expects the request to be filed within a period not exceeding 15 days,” the statement posted on Monday reads. NATO issued a formal invitation to join the military bloc to Montenegro on December 2, which Podgorica accepted the following day. The decision triggered protests in the capital, with some 5,000 opponents taking to the streets. The protesters have called for Djukanovic’s resignation. President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Ilkka Kanerva explained to Sputnik on December 3 that inviting Montenegro to join the alliance was part of NATO’s efforts to stabilize the Balkans.

Macedonia: Deadly Shootout Tests Ethnic Relations (BIRN, by Sinisa Jakov Marusic, 30 December 2015)

Fighting between ethnic Albanian gunmen and Macedonian police left 22 people dead in 2015, reviving memories of past unrest, while surveillance revelations raised doubts about government justice efforts.

In 2015, the divisions between the country’s Macedonians and ethnic Albanians were largely set aside as people focused their attention on the deep political rift caused by the massive illegal surveillance scandal revealed by the opposition. Even the weekend-long shootout in the town of Kumanovo between a group of ethnic Albanian gunmen and the police – the bloodiest incident ever since the armed conflict between security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels in 2001 – failed to ignite wider ethnically-motivated hostilities. Many believed they could see the government’s hand in the shootout, suspecting it was staged to distract attention from the growing political heat on Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. The shootout came against the backdrop of a crisis revolving around opposition claims that Gruevski ordered the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people. Opposition protests against the embattled Gruevski saw a rare display of inter-ethnic unity and solidarity in this usually divided society. The wiretap scandal also shed new light on several other transitional justice issues. Lustration, a controversial government-backed process of exposing former Communist police collaborators, was scrapped as new evidence contained in tapes of wiretapped conversations released by the opposition suggested that the government had been meddling with the process for its own advantage. The opposition also claimed that surveillance tapes of officials’ conversations cast doubt on the convictions of six ethnic Albanians jailed for life for killing five ethnic Macedonians – a verdict reached that sparked ethnic unrest in 2014.

Shootout brings back bitter memories

The two-day-long shootout in ethnically-mixed Kumanovo from May 9-10 left 22 people dead, including eight police officers, although no civilians were injured. The police said they were trying to detain a group of well-armed ‘terrorists’ who had been planning attacks in Macedonia. The violence brought back memories of the 2001 armed conflict and fears that it might result in wider clashes, although calls for calm and tolerance prevailed. In 2001, Macedonia went through a brief armed conflict between Albanian insurgents and the security forces. The conflict ended the same year with the signing of an internationally-brokered peace accord that guaranteed greater rights to Albanians who make up a quarter of the country’s 2.1 million people. But the timing of the events in Kumanovo prompted many opponents of the government, including the opposition Social Democrats’ leader Zoran Zaev, to accuse the authorities of attempting to distract the public from the crisis by orchestrating ethnic unrest. Days after the carnage, Macedonian Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska and secret police chief Saso Mijalkov resigned, although they insisted it was not related to the Kumanovo case. All 29 men accused of being part of or helping the armed group told the Skopje court in December that they were not terrorists. Instead the ethnic Albanian suspects said the shootout was a result of them defending themselves from the police. Seven months after the clashes in Kumanovo, questions still remain about who was behind the armed group, what its political goals were and what kind of attacks they were planning, if any.

Opposition protest unites ethnicities

The Kumanovo crisis briefly interrupted ongoing daily anti-government protests and diverted attention from the wiretapping scandal facing Gruevski. But on May 17, the opposition decided to go ahead with a major rally in Skopje against Gruevski, which was joined by thousands of Albanians. People carried placards calling for Gruevski to step down, while some waved Macedonian, Albanian, Serbian, Roma and Turkish flags in an attempt to show that the country’s various ethnicities were united in their demand for change.

Communist informer hunt scrapped

In April, the opposition Social Democrats presented a batch of covertly-recorded tapes that they said proved that Gruevski’s ruling VMRO DPMNE party had been misusing the work of the country’s controversial state lustration office, which was tasked with rooting out former secret police collaborators, in order to discredit his government’s opponents. One of the most revealing tapes, according to the opposition, contained what appeared to be the voice of VMRO DPMNE legislator and former Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki commissioning a politically-motivated lustration of a judge from the town of Kicevo. Following these revelations, the European Commission in June urged the authorities to “revise/repeal the Law on Lustration and its implementation”, on the grounds that “ideological or party reasons [are] used as grounds for lustration”. This prompted the authorities to call a halt to the much-disputed lustration process from January 2016. It was originally planned to continue until 2019. However, the head of the Lustration Commission, Tome Adziev, who last year was re-elected to lead the body until 2019, insisted that its work has been clean and fair. The Brussels report was “based on insufficient data”, Adziev told BIRN. He said that despite what the enemies of lustration claimed, the process had not been abused to target the government’s opponents, and would wrap up as a “historic gain for the country”.

Macedonia followed in the steps of many former Communist states that brought in lustration laws as a way to address past injustices stemming from politically-motivated prosecutions.

The commission combed through thousands of secret files and declared over 200 people former collaborators. By law these people are now banned from working in state institutions, but some are suing the state in international human rights courts.

Macedonia PM ‘agreed war crimes amnesties’

In April, the opposition also alleged that wiretapped conversations reveal the premier’s direct involvement in a political deal with the junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, to amnesty suspects in four war-crimes cases from the 2001 conflict. The taped conversations purported to reveal how Gruevski first admits to his party colleague, MP Silvana Boneva, that he has just agreed an amnesty for the cases with DUI leader Ali Ahmeti and then instructs Boneva that the motion must be voted on in parliament “in one week’s time”. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia took over jurisdiction of five war-crimes cases from Macedonia in 2002, the year after the conflict, but returned an indictment in only one. The other four were sent back to Macedonia in 2008, and the public prosecutor’s office initially said it would re-examine them. But in a controversial move, the ruling coalition led by Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE party voted in July 2011 to abandon the four war-crimes cases. At the time, Gruevski insisted he had nothing to do with the decision and that it was not part of a political deal with the DUI to join his government.

Life terms upheld in mass murder case

As the year came to an end, the appeals court in Skopje in December upheld life sentences for six ethnic Albanians convicted of terrorism for the killing of five Macedonians in 2012, a case that sparked ethnically-charged unrest. Four of the suspects, Agim Ismailovic, Fejzi Aziri, Haki Aziri and Sami Ljuta will remain in jail in Macedonia, but the two others, Alil Demiri and Afrim Ismailovic, are in prison in neighbouring Kosovo where they are serving another, unrelated sentence. The appeals court hearing had been expected to deliver a twist in the high-profile case as advance speculation suggested that the defence might submit new evidence from the transcripts of wiretapped conversations between officials about the case. According to the head of the opposition Social Democrats, Zoran Zaev, the recordings cast doubt on the convictions. But Zaev has not published the transcripts or given them to the defence, saying that he fears they might spark a violent reaction from the country’s large Albanian community. The bodies of victims Filip Slavkovski, Aleksandar Nakjevski, Cvetanco Acevski and Kire Trickovski, all aged between 18 and 20, were discovered on April 12, 2012 near Smilkovci Lake in the Skopje area. Their bodies had been lined up and they appear to have been executed. The body of 45-year-old Borce Stevkovski was found a short distance away. News of the murders raised ethnic tensions and groups of ethnic Macedonians staged protests, some of which turned violent, blaming the killings on members of the large Albanian minority community. The terrorism convictions, in July 2014, sparked even more tension as running battles erupted in Skopje between several thousand angry and predominantly young ethnic Albanians and riot police who used tear gas, water cannons, stun grenades and pepper spray in an attempt to quell the unrest.