LOCAL PRESS

 

Dacic: Policy towards Ukraine unchanged (Beta/Tanjug)

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has stated that Serbia’s policy regarding the crisis in Ukraine has not changed and called on the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Petr Poroshenko respectively, to invest maximal efforts towards a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Ukraine. “We want the crisis in Ukraine to be resolved by peaceful means. Russia and Ukraine are our friends,” Dacic told a regular annual press conference at the Foreign Ministry, Beta reports. Dacic noted that Serbia respected and supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but that on the other side, Serbia opines that, based on its own experience, only dialogue can lead to a lasting solution. “We must not get involved in this war, but it seems to be someone’s objective,” Dacic pointed. He pointed out that Serbia was prepared, as a state that is close to both Ukraine and Russia and to both Brussels and Washington, to assist maximally and that it will do so through the OSCE chairmanship in the course of 2015. “Serbia cannot sanction the bigger and stronger,” said Dacic, reiterating that Serbia will take care of its state and national interests. Dacic has assessed that the pressure on Serbia with regards to the Ukraine crisis will grow even stronger.

 

Djuric: Even if we disagree for 200 years… (B92)

“Talks on the Peace Park and the planters on the bridge in Kosovska Mitrovica will be conducted in September in Brussels,” the Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric told B92 news. “The bridge is important because it prevents someone from running with a car into the main street in North Mitrovica. That is why it is important for people that there will be no further decision without agreement with them,” said Djuric. Speaking about the first 100 days of the government’s successes and failures in Kosovo, Djuric said that nothing can be viewed outside the context of continuity from 2012 to this day. “At the time there was a turn in the policy towards the province, an active stand was taken. In these six to eight weeks everything that could have happened theoretically happened, and for the first time since 1999 it is not possible to form the provincial government in Pristina without talks with the Serb community in Kosovo and Metohija. The fact that a Serb woman chaired the session is also a big message of encouragement,” said Djuric. He said the government cannot be satisfied with the general situation in Kosovo and Metohija, primarily over unemployment that reaches up to 60 percent in Serb region. “One of the tasks will be economic problems in the province, because they have been in the shadow of political problems for a long time,” said Djuric. Regarding his recent visit to Pristina, Djuric said: “Fear has been the dominant feeling in the past, and I want to show that this is normal, just as it is normal for some Albanian from Pristina to come to some other part of Serbia. We can disagree on the province’s status for 200 years, but this doesn’t mean that we need to hate each other. Whether we want it or not, we must turn our economic correlation into an opportunity,” said Djuric.

 

Policemen from Kosovo dismissed over the Brussels agreement (Danas)

While we are waiting for an answer to the question whether the Brussels agreement is in accordance with the Serbian Constitution, the legal confusion created by this situation left around 700 policemen from Kosovo without jobs. Employment contracts were terminated with them after the Serbian government decree from December 2013 and they were given the possibility to go to early retirement. Since the policemen, some of whom with only two-three years of employment don’t wish to retire, 700 of them will try to challenge the legality of the government decree before the Administrative Court. They also requested the Constitutional Court to assess the constitutionality of this decree, disputable according to them. Boban Mitkovic is one of the policemen who received notice on termination of employment at the beginning of this year. Since 1999, when he left Kosovo, he has been working in the Belgrade Police Administration. Still, as he says, he has still worked in Kosovo “on paper.” “According to the government decree that incurred as a result of the Brussels agreement, all policemen who were registered in Kosovo had to be dismissed. The paradox is that all of these people have been working in Serbia for 15 years. Two hundred and eighty of them found jobs in the Kosovo institutions, but 700 of us were dismissed in an absolutely illegal manner. All we want is to do our job,” says Mitkovic. According to him, there had been attempts to resolve this situation in talks with the politicians, “but everything remained on mere promises.” “The Serbian government decree that abolished jobs to policemen is completely illegal. Most of them were not left with any options. We demand that they are enabled to work in border administrations at the administrative line with Kosovo,” the Chairman of the Serbian Police Labor Union Gliso Vidovic tells Danas. He adds that this decision is even worse when one considers that the police have great need for staff. Since talks with government representatives didn’t yield results, the policemen looked for justice before the Administrative Court. Attorney Vladimir Radovanovic who represents around 400 policemen, opines that this case clearly shows what happens when politics collides with the law. “This decree is a political act that resulted from the Brussels agreement. Unfortunately, the epilogue of this case and the careers of these people depend directly from politics,” says Radovanovic. According to him, such disputes often end in one-two years, but Radovanovic doesn’t want to speculate on the date of the court ruling if politics interfere in the case.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Tuzla protest ends (Fena)

After no one met with them in the Tuzla Canton Assembly, disenfranchised workers of companies from area of Tuzla Canton continued their protest march towards the Liberty Square. Sakib Kopic, President of Solidarity Union, addressed the present, reminding of workers’ demands and Nermin Duranovic and some other workers addressed as well, after which they ended the protest. Protest of around 500 workers in Tuzla began this morning in front of judicial institutions. They protested because the government has done nothing to launch production in big companies in area of Tuzla Canton, even though it promised to do so. The protest passed without incidents.

 

Ivanov: Athens not contributing to overcome the name issue (Dnevnik)

“Athens is approaching the name issue talks from a position of strength, is expanding the limits of the talks and does not contribute to finding a mutually acceptable solution,” Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov said in an interview to Dnevnik. His comments follow the recent visit of the UN appointed name issue envoy Matthew Nimetz, who had meetings in both Skopje and Athens this week. Ambassador Nimetz left his meeting with Greek Foreign Minister Venizelos on Wednesday saying no progress has been made in the talks. President Ivanov estimates that it would be necessary to put some pressure on Greece on this issue that would result with Athens respecting international law and the obligations it has undertaken previously, under the 1995 Interim Accord. “Instead of answers, from Greece we hear statements that seem to come from a different age, from a time when people who have a different identity, language or last name were routinely killed, expelled and assimilated. These statements we hear come from a time when human rights and human dignity were being trampled,” says President Ivanov. President Ivanov tells Dnevnik that it is incomprehensible for any person, especially in the 21^st century, to refuse to accept that the Republic of Macedonia is a reality in the Balkans and in Europe. “It is beyond belief to deny someone his language and identity at this day and age. It is unbelievable to have someone deny us our right to exist and be what we are, what we have always been,’ said President Ivanov. “The problem with the slowing down of the Macedonian EU integrations is also a problem for the EU and, as I have said to Chancellor Merkel in Dubrovnik, it comes as a responsibility of all EU members. I have pointed out to the Chancellor that the Greek position to hold talks about the Macedonian national identity, on top of the name of the country, is something that goes beyond the frame set up by the UN process and leaves no hope to find a solution,” Ivanov said. According to the Macedonian President, one recent encouraging moment are the conclusions that have come out of the meeting in Dubrovnik, where the leaders of the so called Brdo-Brioni process expressed hope that the European Council will allow the opening of the membership negotiations and have them run in parallel with the name issue talks to resolve this bilateral dispute with Greece.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Kosovo Leaders Have Been Accused of Killing and Harvesting Organs (Vice, by John Dyer, 30 July 2014)

Americans can learn some lessons from the findings of a special European Union prosecutor who believes Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders killed Serbs and others in the late 1990s in order to harvest and sell their organs.

On Tuesday, Clint Williamson — an American diplomat appointed EU prosecutor in 2011 to investigate crimes against humanity in Kosovo — released a scathing statement that accused the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of murdering a handful of people and then trafficking their kidneys, livers, and other body parts. KLA leaders now run the tiny Balkan country’s government.

“If even one person was subjected to such a horrific practice, and we believe a small number were, that is a terrible tragedy and the fact that it occurred on a limited scale does not diminish the savagery of such a crime,” Williamson said in the statement.

Williamson determined that KLA fighters tortured and killed around 10 Serbian and Albanian Kosovar prisoners in secret camps in northern Albania, removed their organs, and sold the parts abroad for transplantation.

The KLA also murdered, kidnapped, and detained people illegally, and in general oversaw a reign of terror against its non-Albanian and Albanian opponents after the group won Kosovo’s independence from Serbia in 1999.

The important thing for Americans to recall here is that the KLA achieved victory with the help of United States and NATO bombers attacking Serbian forces.

At the time, President Bill Clinton portrayed the KLA as freedom fighters challenging Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic — a genocidal monster who died in a Hague prison cell in 2006. A few years ago, grateful Kosovars erected a bronze statue of Clinton in downtown Pristina, their capital.

But now, it turns out, members of the KLA were probably monsters, too.

“Our separatists are always good guys,” said Alan Kuperman, a public affairs professor at the University of Texas who has written about the moral hazards of intervening militarily for humanitarian purposes, speaking to VICE News. “Neither side was the good guy or the bad guy in this conflict in Kosovo. The way the story was portrayed in the 90s was always a caricature.”

The overlap with the US position on Russia’s involvement in Ukraine is troubling, said Kuperman.

“We condemn these separatists in Ukraine because they shot down a civilian plane,” he said. “They are evil, and Russia is bad for supporting them. But our separatists in Kosovo were trafficking in humans, in drugs, and allegedly in organ parts. But we’re not bad for supporting them. There’s a real double standard or hypocrisy.”

Serbia, human rights advocates, and EU and NATO officials have long alleged that the KLA operated like a mafia after independence, using intimidation and violence to consolidate power. And when he was fighting with the KLA, current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was known as “The Snake.”

“There is no doubt that in Kosovo there was widespread, systematic, and ethnically motivated persecution of the Serbian and non-Albanian population,” said Marko Djuric, director of the Serbian agency that oversees Kosovo, in a statement this week. “That is a truth that remains registered in the tragic history of this region.”

Serbia does not yet recognize Kosovo’s independence. It even operates its own mail system and other government agencies clandestinely in the country.

Williamson said he’d like to indict unspecified Kosovo leaders, but he can’t file charges until Kosovo establishes a special court to hear them. A statement by the Kosovo government said the special court will soon be up and running.

“This is the best evidence that Kosovo is a state of law and that it will continue to take all necessary steps in cooperation with international partners in this process,” the statement said.

But Williamson will need to convince Kosovar witnesses to testify against their leaders in order to make the charges stick. In a mafia state, that won’t be easy.

“As long as a few powerful people continue to thwart investigations into their own criminality, the people of Kosovo as a whole pay the price as this leaves a dark cloud over the country,” Williamson said.

 

Slovenia’s Cerar May Reverse Election Vow on Asset Sales (Bloomberg, by Boris Cerni, 31 July 2014)

Slovenia’s next likely premier may backtrack on pledges to slash the previous government’s asset-sale plans, risking the same voter backlash that brought down his predecessor, said economists in London and Prague.

Miro Cerar’s party, which garnered the most votes in the July 13 ballot, will have 36 lawmakers after the 90-member assembly convenes today. To build a majority cabinet, he may secure cooperation from the pensioners party, the Social Democrats and the Alliance of outgoing Premier Alenka Bratusek, according to preliminary talks that started last week.

“There already appears to be a difference between Cerar’s pre-election stance on privatization and his post-election one,” said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London. “He is no fan of state ownership and may even speed up some of the asset sales.”

The Adriatic nation that adopted the euro in 2007 last year flirted with an international bailout before Bratusek rescued banks with a 3.2 billion-euro ($4.3 billion) capital boost and started selling state-owned enterprises, including phone company Telekom Slovenije DD and bank Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor d.d.

The yield on Slovenia’s euro-denominated bonds maturing in 2024, which surged to almost 8 percent in November 2011, advanced 8 basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, to 3.2 percent in Ljubljana, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The cost of insuring Slovenian bonds against non-payment with credit default swaps has fallen eight basis points this month to 128 basis points. That compares with a record 510 basis points in August 2012, data show.

Sale Backlash

In going ahead with selling state enterprises, Cerar risks the same backlash from the populace and opposition that undid Bratusek’s government.

Bratusek last year pledged in a plan sent to the European Commission to sell 15 companies, which later ignited a leadership contest in her ruling Positive Slovenia party. She lost that bid to Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Jankovic, triggering the collapse of the administration in May and paving the way for the July early vote.

Still, Cerar’s strategy may lie in his ability to manage the flow of sales, ensuring the state retains control over the infrastructure of utilities, said Spiro.

“Cerar has a number of things working in his favor and one of them is that he doesn’t have markets breathing down his neck,” Spiro said. “Yet, the absence of market pressure risks lulling the new government into a degree of complacency about the fiscal and structural reforms that need to be undertaken.”

Government Goals

The new government, which should be in place by mid-September, must lure foreign capital, restructure corporate debt and push ahead with asset sales to underpin the December bank rescue, central bank Governor Bostjan Jazbec said in a July 23 interview.

The budget gap, which ballooned to almost 15 percent of economic output in 2013, is projected by the central bank to narrow to 4.1 percent of GDP by year-end with the outgoing government saying the target is on track.

As the financial industry recovers, growth in Slovenia’s export-dependent economy will double to 1.4 percent in 2014 from 0.7 percent this year on improved trade with the rest of the euro region, Jazbec said.

Should he be confirmed as prime minister by the incoming parliament, Cerar will probably refrain from shrinking Bratusek’s list of 15 companies on offer and may be pressured by the European Commission to widen it, Jaromir Sindel, an economist at Citigroup Inc. in Prague, said in e-mailed response to questions.

Even so, he will have to listen to potential coalition partners as he balances avoiding Bratusek’s fate and continuing with austerity measures, said Sindel.

“We believe Cerar will continue with privatization, but it will be influenced by the composition of his government,” Sindel said.

 

As preparations for President Putin’s visit inspires the launch of a local café named after the Russian President (ITAR-TASS, 31 July 2014)
A café named after Russian President Vladimir Putin has opened in the historical center of the Serbian city of Novi Sad. A portrait of the president was put on the sign next of the name Putin. Owner of the café Radivoje Milyanich said that "there are many people who respect President Putin, many Russophiles and people who love him". He said it in an interview with national television RTS. "I do not see anything controversial in the name of the cafe," he added.

Officially, the storefront starts working next week.