LOCAL PRESS

 

Dacic: Agreement on transfer of policemen into KPS (RTS)

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic has stated that they had agreed in Brussels on the manner of admission of policemen from the Serbian Interior Ministry in the Kosovo Police Service, and that judicial issues would be discussed at a next meeting. Dacic told the press in the Serbian Government that there were some status issues at the meeting in Brussels that referred to the employment contract. The Prime Minister said that they reached agreement on the police and defined the manner in which the integration would be conducted, i.e. admission of policemen. “Transfer of policemen into Kosovo Police will commence in the following days,” said Dacic, concluding that agreement reached regarding the police had been reached based on earlier defined proposals.

 

Ashton: Essential progress in the implementation of the Brussels agreement (Novosti)

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has announced that she, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Kosovo premier Hashim Thaqi have discussed the implementation of the Brussels agreement and that essential progress has been reached on police issues and on other aspects of the realization of the agreement. She said that the discussion had been constructive and that it had been agreed that the talks should continue on 13 December. On the basis of the reached progress, Ashton will present her next report on the dialogue to the EU Council on 17 December, at which the foreign ministers of EU member-states will give their final opinion on the date of the first intergovernmental conference, which marks the formal beginning of Serbia’s EU accession talks.

 

Ruzic: Serbia-EU negotiations on 20 December or 21 January (Novosti)

Serbian Minister without Portfolio in charge of EU integration Branko Ruzic stated that it is symbolically important for Serbia that the intergovernmental conference with the EU be held this month and announced that the date will be known on 17 December the latest, following the meeting of the EU foreign ministers. If at the time talks are not scheduled to commence on 20 December, they will most probably start on 21 January, Ruzic told Novosti. He pointed that many EU countries support the inter-governmental conference to be held on 20 December, reminding that this was one of conclusions reached at the last summit of Italy and France.

 

Serbia has shown it is ready to meet expectations of EU members – US (Tanjug)

Serbia has demonstrated readiness and ability to meet the expectations of the EU states, which will be deciding this month about the date to start the accession talks with Belgrade, stated U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf. Answering a question posed by the Tanjug correspondent at a foreign press briefing, Harf said that the US does not make any decisions regarding Serbia’s EU accession, but added that it continues to fully support Serbia’s dedication to a future within the European Union. We believe that Serbia has demonstrated its readiness and ability to meet the expectations of EU members, who will decide on the beginning of EU accession talks later this month, Harf said. She commended Belgrade and Pristina for significant progress in agreement implementation, adding that the US hopes this process will continue.

Vice President of the German Marshal Fund Ivan Vejvoda said on Wednesday that it is now quite certain that the EU accession negotiations with Serbia will commence very soon.

Whether this will happen before the New Year or several days later is not important, Vejvoda told Tanjug.

 

Brammertz in UN SC: Serbia’s cooperation with the Hague Tribunal very good (Beta)

ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz pointed out at the UN SC session that cooperation between the Serbian authorities and the ICTY was very good, and that Serbia continued to play an important role in making sure that the ICTY Prosecution Office completes its work successfully. Brammertz stated that it is now necessary that the authorities in Belgrade carry out comprehensive investigation and prosecute individuals who helped Hague fugitives hide. President of the Tribunal Theodor Meron presented the Tribunal’s Annual Report to UN ambassadors where he said that the first-instance trial proceedings against Radovan Karadzic and Goran Hadzic should be completed in October 2015 and in late 2015 respectively. Stating that the proceedings against Ratko Mladic might last until the end of 2016, Meron did not want to comment when a verdict could be expected in the case against Vojislav Seselj.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Conference on B&H experiences in finding missing persons: Around 30,000 missing in B&H (Oslobodjenje)
At the conference, dubbed “The Search for Missing Persons: Lessons from B&H, Amor Masovic, Director of the B&H Institute for Missing Persons, said that B&H’s problem with missing persons started to be resolved practically two days after the start of the war in B&H.
“Already on 8 April 1992, in the framework of the then-Ministry of Defense of B&H, they formed a commission with the task of recording missing persons, taking care of the war prisoners, recording deaths, and the like,” explained Masovic, adding that several months after that, the RB&H government took on the role of founding a state commission for exchanging prisoners of war, persons deprived of freedom, and corpses, as well as recording the dead, injured, and missing. Masovic said that it is of extreme importance to start recording missing persons as soon as possible. He recalled that the state commission for exchanging prisoners of war, at the moment of the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord, had recorded 27,794 missing from all nationalities. “When we talk about missing persons in the war, it was believed that among the missing persons was a significant number of the living, unfortunately, after the end of hostilities, it turned out that the greatest number of those who were recorded as missing were persons for whose postmortem remains we are searching,” said Masovic. At the conference data was presented from during the war in B&H, 1992 to 1995, where around 30,000 persons were declared missing. Almost 20 years from the start of the war, at least two-thirds of the victims had been found. The Bosnian model used in the process of finding missing persons, it was emphasized, showed itself as the most successful in the world. In seeking the missing, the Human Rights House has helped families since 2003. On the second day of the conference they are planning a visit to the Podrinje Identification Project (PIP) in Tuzla.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Stabilising public debt should be Serbia's top priority in 2014 – IMF official ( HYPERLINK "http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/finance/_blank" Hispanic Business' Finance Channel, 5 December 2013) 

One of the Serbian government's top priorities next year should be efforts aimed at stabilising the public debt which more than doubled since 2008 when it stood at 29% of GDP, the IMF resident representative in Serbia, Daehaeng Kim, was quoted as saying by news agency Tanjug. Kim added that in the short run the country must cope with relatively weak economic growth coupled with high unemployment at over 24% and large budget gap. He noted that the Serb authorities need to work on creating macroeconomic stability and implementing structural reforms in order to build solid foundations for sustainable economic growth. Kim welcomed the government's new basket of austerity measures which includes amending the labour and privatisation laws and ensuring the sustainability of the pension system and public administration. The latter is expected to help stabilise the country's public debt at around 70% of GDP in the near-term, according to the government's 2014 fiscal strategy. A technical mission of the IMF began a two-week visit to Serbia on December 3 to examine the state of the public  HYPERLINK "http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/finance/" finances as the country hopes to qualify next year for a precautionary agreement with the global lender. Serbia's public debt is projected to increase to 64% of GDP this year from 61% of GDP at end-2012, well above the legal limit of 45%, according to the government. It is forecast to start declining in 2016 thanks to falling budget deficits. The public debt rose significantly since 2008 due to lower budget revenue and the lack of structural reforms which led to an increase of the country's consolidated budget gap from 2.6% of GDP in 2008 to 6.4% in 2012.

 

Bosnia court won't detain convicted war criminals (World Bulletin, 5 December 2013)

The war crimes court said in a statement the request for detention was legally unfounded.

Bosnia's war crimes court on Thursday declined a prosecutor's request to detain nine convicted Bosnian Serb war criminals who were released last month pending new trials, angering survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The court freed 10 such convicts after the European Court of Human Rights (ECoHR) ruled last July in a separate case that the legal rights of two of them were violated due to the application of a criminal code more stringent than the one in force when the crimes were committed.

The 10 prisoners, convicted for the Srebrenica massacre and other offences during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, complained on the same grounds to Bosnia's Constitutional Court. It then quashed their verdicts, returned their cases to the war crimes tribunal and ordered it to deliver new verdicts within three months.

The war crimes court said in a statement the request for detention was legally unfounded. It will decide on the detention request for the 10th man on Friday.

The decision infuriated survivors and families of some of the 8,000 Muslims killed by separatist Serb forces in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

"Our lives and the lives of our families have been put in jeopardy," said Munira Subasic, head of the Mothers of Srebrenica group. "None of us will testify as witnesses at war crimes trials anymore."

The 1995 killing of thousands of Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces is regarded as the worst atrocity committed on European soil since World War Two.

The Sarajevo war crimes court was set up in 2005 to reduce the workload of the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

The Bosnian Serb wartime military commander, General Ratko Mladic, and political leader Radovan Karadzic remain on trial in The Hague on charges including genocide in Srebrenica.