LOCAL PRESS

 

Vucic repeats that Serbia is a militarily neutral country (Tanjug/Beta) Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has stated that Serbia is a militarily neutral country that will not enter any military pact. “Serbia is militarily neutral and is proud of that. Serbia will not enter any military pact, it has its army and will preserve its sovereignty and independence. Serbia loves itself,” said he. Vucic stressed that Serbia will remain militarily neutral, Tanjug reported. He added that the country’s policy is clear and unequivocal, it is on the European road but wants to have very good cooperation with the Russian Federation.

 

Dacic: Serbia doesn’t have much maneuvering space (Tanjug)

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has pointed out today in Vienna that Serbia, a country that is located between EU member states from where migrants are arriving and those they wish to reach, doesn’t have much maneuvering space in managing migration flows passing through Serbia. “At this moment we are prepared to offer support, temporary shelter and care for six thousand people, which corresponds to the two-three-day influx of refugees, but we cannot allow for Serbia to become a shelter for them, nor can we admit back migrants who were in transit through our territory but didn’t receive asylum in the EU,” Dacic told a conference dubbed “Joint Management of Migration”. He says that the only sustainable solution for the migrant crisis is to keep the migrants and refugees in the region of origin, i.e. as close as possible to their country of origin, and for the EU to find a single stand and to harmonize a comprehensive solution. Dacic voiced satisfaction over the good communication among the Western Balkan route countries.

 

UNHCR concerned over growing refugees along borders (Beta)

The UNHCR expressed concern over restrictive rules endorsed by a number of European states, inflicting unnecessary suffering on refugees and asylum seekers across Europe, creating chaos along several state borders and particular pressure on Greece. UNHCR says the main reason for concern was a failure to carry out a proper registration process under European and international standards. In addition, the selection of people is based on ethnicity and other criteria, instead of the need for legal protection. The UNHCR has also warned that the people are left in the cold, exposed to the risks of violence and exploitation in the hands of traffickers. In the eyes of the UN refugee organization, these processes have clearly undermined last week's conclusions by the European Council that the migrants have to file for asylum when they arrive in a state of the European Union, which allows them entry into the Union without proper travel documents.

 

Drecun wonders whether Serbs will benefit from Thaqi as president (B92)

The Chairperson of the Serbian parliamentary Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun has told TV B92 that he doesn’t know whether the Kosovo Serb MPs will give quorum for holding the Kosovo Assembly session for electing the Kosovo president. He notes that the Serbs need to use every situation in order to strengthen their presence in the provisional institutions, and to thus strengthen their interests. “We need to use very situation to prevent the passing of decisions that are opposed to our interests. It is necessary to estimate whether the benefit from Thaqi as president and his avoiding the trial before the Special Court is larger or greater, or to make some agreement and accelerate the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities,” says Drecun. He says there is no dilemma that Thaqi is trying to avoid being on the indictment of the Special Court for KLA crimes. He says he wouldn’t be surprised if the current political crisis has been created in agreement between Thaqi and Ramush Haradinaj in order to send a message to the international community. “Pristina is using the situation not to implement what had been agreed and to send a message that they should not overdo it with the indictments against the KLA since the international community might be faced with even greater instability,” opines Drecun. He says that the motive is not to overdo with the indictments and that KLA must not be exposed as a criminal organization that conducted ethnic cleansing.

 

Working Group for KLA crimes might include Mrkic (Novosti)

The Serbian parliamentary Working Group for collecting facts and evidence in shedding light on crimes against Serbs and other communities in Kosovo and Metohija will request from Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to delegate a representative, the Chairperson of this Group Milovan Drecun told Novosti yesterday after the fourth session of the Working Group. Drecun says this might the President’s fioreign advisor Ivan Mrkic.

 

SNS presents election list name (Tanjug)

The list of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) will have the title Aleksandar Vucic – Serbia Wins, Tanjug learns. The SNS says that this sends a message that the country’s success, and not party’s success, is the most important thing for them. The elections have not yet been slated, but it is expected that they could be held at the end of April.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Gruevski says elections on 5 June will go ahead with or without SDSM (Republika)

VMRO-DPMNE President Nikola Gruevski said that conditions were ripe to hold fair and democratic elections on 24 April, but that his party decided to reach a compromise and postpone them to 5 June for the good of the country. The decision on Tuesday evening came as Parliament was set to dissolve itself on midnight, according to an already reached decision that was to pave way for elections on 24 April, elections which the main opposition party SDSM said will boycott. “The compromise to hold the elections on 5 June was reached because the US and EU representatives confirmed to us that this will be a one-off delay, and that there are no additional negotiations on organizing the elections to be held until 5 June, because even now they believe that the State Electoral Commission will have enough time to do its job regarding the voting registry, and there will be no additional conditions, including over the media law, or additional estimates on whether Macedonia is prepared these elections. All issues are absorbed in the moving of the election date”, Gruevski said. According to the VMRO President, his coalition partner DUI has given its firm assurances that the elections on 5 June will go ahead, regardless whether SDSM agrees to take part in them or not. “With this delay we give a final chance to SDSM to go to the elections, and to look the people in the eyes after imposing this political crisis on them. The state can’t be held hostage by one political party,” Gruevski said.

 

Zvizdic on agreements on EBRD Summit (Faktor)

On the margins of the Investment Summit of EBRD in London, the Chairman of the B&H Council of Ministers Denis Zvizdic and B&H Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Mirko Sarovic held a bilateral meeting with the Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic. Oreskovic congratulated the Zvizdic and B&H citizens on the submission of application for membership in the EU and said that Croatia will strongly support B&H on that path. Zvizdic and Oreskovic agreed that good neighborly and regional cooperation is important and that in the coming period it is necessary to strengthen bilateral relations and develop economic cooperation of the two countries and the countries of the region. Zvizdic said that the Council of Ministers decided to significantly accelerate integration into the EU and informed Oreskovic about the current political and economic situation in B&H and the implementation of the Reform Agenda. Zvizdic said that infrastructure projects, such as the Corridor 5C, the Adriatic-Ionian highway and the Adriatic-Ionian pipeline, are extremely important for B&H. Zvizdic also expressed concern with the nuclear waste dump near the border with B&H and hope that this problem will be solved soon. Zvizdic and Oreskovic also discussed possibilities of cross-border cooperation, European partnership, transportation, energetics, exchange of agricultural goods and food, and concluded that there is space for even better cooperation. They agreed on the organization of a joint session of the Croatian government and the Council of Ministers in the coming period.

 

Mektic: Bosnia has 65 warrants for fighters on foreign soil (Fena/Srna)

B&H Minister of Security Dragan Mektic said that B&H had 65 outstanding blue and two red warrants for the arrest of people from B&H fighting on foreign soil. The minister said that the relevant authorities in Bosnia were using all measures to secure the chief of the Islamic Community in B&H, reis Husein Kavazovic, and other persons, which he said were receiving serious threats.

 

Will Radoncic be deprived of license for access to classified information? (Klix)

Although the question was raised whether the accused leader of the Alliance for Better Future (SBB) and a delegate in the House of Peoples of the B&H Parliamentary Assembly Fahrudin Radoncic should be deprived of access to top secret data, B&H Minister of Security Dragan Mektic confirmed that Radoncic has no access to data with the tag of strict confidentiality.

Based on the Law on Access to Classified Information, as a delegate in the House of Peoples, Radoncic has access to secret data. However, according to Mektic, that does not include all degrees, but exclusively the degrees of internal and confidential. “With the very appointment to a function, delegates in the Parliamentary Assembly and the House of Peoples obtain the right to access certain secret information. However, not everyone has equal access to secret data because there are certain degrees. Radoncic can access information to the degree of internal and confidential and, as the Minister of Security, cannot deny that right to him, regardless of the fact that he is in house arrest,” Mektic said. Member of the Collegium of the B&H House of Peoples Ognjen Tadic confirmed that the B&H House of Peoples has not yet received official confirmation of Radoncic’s current status and the process being led against him neither from the B&H Court, the B&H Prosecutor’s Office, SIPA or the Intelligence and Security Agency (OSA).

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Balkans Struggling on Human Rights: Amnesty Report (BIRN, by Ivana Nikolic, 24 February 2016)

All the Balkan countries are continuing to struggle with human rights issues, including dealing with war crimes and protecting refugees, says a new report by Amnesty International.

The latest global report published by international campaign group Amnesty International on Wednesday said that all the Balkan countries continued to struggle with human rights protection in 2015. The 408-page State of the World’s Human Rights report criticised Serbia for what it said was the continued slow pace of slow war crime prosecutions, noting that “few proceedings were concluded at the Special War Crimes Court”. “The Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor issued only three indictments. Another 23 cases – involving over 200 suspects – remained under investigation,” the report said. Serbia was also criticised for the fact that the suspected murderers of the Bytyqi brothers, three Albanian-American Kosovo Liberation Army volunteers killed in Serbia in 1999, were still at large “despite promises made to their relatives by the War Crimes Prosecutor and the Prime Minister”. The Amnesty report further highlighted Serbia’s failure to recognise the right to compensation for victims of enforced disappearances and wartime sexual violence in proposed legislation. An amendment to the bill, which has not yet become law, was not made public. Other Balkan states were also criticised for their lack of commitment to addressing the issue of enforced disappearances during the 1990s conflicts. Montenegro was spotlighted for the final judgement in a case which saw nine former police officials acquitted of the enforced disappearance of 60 Bosnian refugees in 1992. “Amnesty International had considered the verdict to be inconsistent with domestic law and international humanitarian law,” the report said. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, access to justice and reparation for past crimes remained limited due to a lack of commitment to adopt and secure adequate resources for state-wide programmes, the report said. “Legislation that would enable effective reparation, including a comprehensive programme for victims of crimes under international law, and free legal aid services to victims of torture and civilian victims of war, remained absent,” it said. In Kosovo, the rights group noted that “Kosovo Serbs were subject to threats, robberies and attacks”, adding that “inter-ethnic tensions were also heightened by Kosovo’s unsuccessful application for UNESCO membership”. Croatia meanwhile failed to ratify the International Convention against Enforced Disappearances and to adopt a law on missing persons. “In the absence of these legal instruments, relatives of the 1,600 missing persons in Croatia were denied access to justice and reparations,” Amnesty said. Croatia was also criticised for discriminating against the country’s Serb minority, particularly in public sector employment and in not restoring tenancy rights to social housing that was vacated during the 1991-95 war. The other Balkan countries also came under fire for what Amnesty said was widespread discrimination against their minorities, with the Roma population suffering the most, according to the report. Roma people across the region are usually not given adequate housing and employment opportunities and suffer from social exclusion, it said.

Refugee influx poses challenges

Many Balkan countries failed in some way in 2015 when it came to handling the influx of refugees and migrants, according to Amnesty. Recognised refugees faced obstacles in accessing education, housing and health care in Romania, the report said, while many refugees and migrants alleged they were ill-treated by interior ministry guards in Macedonia, where the police also used excessive force against them. Croatia meanwhile failed to lay on adequate facilities for the refugees and migrants passing through the country, it added. “Croatia struggled to provide adequate reception conditions and access to asylum proceedings to the large number of refugees and migrants that arrived in the country,” Amnesty said. In other conclusions laid out by the report, threats and attacks on journalists and independent media continued throughout 2015 in almost all the Balkan countries, while the government interference in media freedom was also noted. These attacks and the threats were not effectively investigated, with only few perpetrators brought to justice, Amnesty alleged. In Macedonia, over 2,000 journalists were estimated to have been under surveillance by the government, according to surveillance tapes released by the opposition. “Published recordings indicated the indirect financing of pro-government media, and political influence over the appointment of journalists and news content,” the report said. In Montenegro meanwhile, Amnesty expressed concerns about police using “excessive force during mass protests organised by opposition parties against the government’s failure to address poverty, crime and corruption”.

 

Austria Wants a Full Stop to Migrant Influx Along Balkans (AP, by George Jahn, 24 February 2016)

Austria wants not only to crimp the influx of migrants pouring into Europe but to fully stop it, its interior minister declared Wednesday as she convened a meeting of ministers from Western Balkan nations. Greece — which was not invited — blasted the gathering as "hostile."

Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner's comments reflect Austria's defiance of EU criticism and concern about the thousands of asylum-seekers that have pushed daily against the country's southern border. Austria's immigration problems are minor, however, compared to fellow EU member Greece, which has seen more than 102,500 people cross the sea to its islands so far this year. More than 1 million people reached Europe last year — more than 80 percent of them landing in Greece first. Austria has recently capped the number of asylum-seekers it will accept daily at 80 refugees and limited the number of refugees it will let pass through the country — creating a bottleneck of refugees that is hurting nations further south, such as Greece. Greece was highly critical of Wednesday's meeting in Vienna, which was attended by the interior and foreign ministers of EU members Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria, as well officials from Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. "Our country's non-invitation to this meeting is perceived as a non-friendly act, as it creates the impression that some, in our absence, want to initiate decisions that affect us directly," Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said. "(This is) yet another extra-institutional initiative that violates the letter and the spirit of the treaties of the European Union and international law on refugees." Athens objects to what it sees as Austrian-led attempts to leave it alone to handle the burden of those arriving in Greece by boat and setting off northwards through Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia in search for a better life in Austria, Germany and other prosperous EU nations. The EU says Austrian caps on refugee numbers are illegal. Germany — the economic powerhouse of the 28-nation EU — is sending conflicting signals on the subject. Its interior minister says his country won't put up in the long term with other nations simply waving migrants through to Germany, and is objecting to the number that neighboring Austria is allowing to transit. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains focused not on border controls but on Turkey, from where hundreds of thousands have crossed to Greece, as key to resolving Europe's immigration crisis. Mikl-Leitner shrugged off the concerns from Greece and the EU. She told reporters Austria is still in favor of a common EU solution to the migrant problem but the EU needs short-term "national measures" in the interim to stanch the flow. "It is important and necessary to stop the flow of migration along the Balkans," she told reporters. "We need measures that can be implemented together with the Balkan states." Defending the need for the meeting, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz told reporters the Greeks "are only interested in transporting the refugees as fast as possible to central Europe." Along with Austria, countries on the migrant route to western Europe already have introduced stricter transit rules in the past weeks. Greece's migration minister said he expects the number of stranded immigrants in his country to reach "tens of thousands" because of those moves. Minister Ioannis Mouzalas said the Greek government was looking at additional sites to set up temporary transit camps by the end of the week. "It's not something we can do in one or two days, but we are trying to keep people in humane conditions," he said. Greece, he said, was applying diplomatic pressure on EU and NATO allies to limit unilateral actions by EU member states to restrict entry to asylum-seekers and to make recently deployed patrols by the military alliance in the Aegean Sea more effective.

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Elena Becatoros and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens and AP video journalist Philipp Jenne in Vienna contributed.

 

Montenegro Parliament Set to Oust Speaker (BIRN, by Dusica Tomovic, 24 February 2016)

Ruling coalition MPs are mustering to dismiss the Speaker and Social Democratic Party leader Ranko Krivokapic - who has fallen out with his former ally, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

Montenegro's parliament could debate the dismissal of the speaker, Ranko Krivokapic, as soon as next week, after the ruling coalition submitted a motion to remove him. The ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, and its allies among the ethnic minority Bosniak, Croatian and Albanian parties, on Tuesday announced that they will support his dismissal. After the opposition Positive party also said it would vote in favour, a motion calling for his removal is likely to secure a majority in parliament. The move comes after crisis talks between the government and opposition over ways to organize the "first free and fair election" in Montenegro failed on Friday, and after Krivokapic's own Social Democratic Party party in January backed a failed no-confidence vote in the government. As expected, Djukanovic's party then called for the sacking of Krivokapic - until January's vote a close ally of the Prime Minister. "In voting against the government, Krivokapic's SDP ceased to be part of the ruling coalition. His dismissal is a condition that the new political reality comply with the facts and with parliamentary practice," the motion signed by 36 MPs reads. "As a direct participant in the parliamentary dialogue [with the opposition], the former president of parliament no longer enjoys confidence to mediate the dialogue because his authority was unable to bring this process to an end," Positive's leader, Darko Pajovic, said on Tuesday. The vote on January 27 terminated the almost two-decade-old alliance between Djukanovic’s DPS and Krivokapic's SDP. In the past two years, however, the SDP has increasingly criticized the government's performance on reforming the judiciary and over the state of media freedom. Privatisation of the state-owned electric power company, Elektroprivreda, the lease of a luxury coastal resort to foreign investors and the state of the fight against organised crime and corruption are all issues that have widened divisions between the two parties. In May 2015, Djukanovic hinted at the breakup of the coalition and said the alliance at national level was only held together by their joint support for Montenegro's bid to join NATO. “Otherwise there would not be any other reason to suffer such masochism,” he said. After the no-confidence vote, Krivokapic joined the three centre-left oppostion parties in EU-meditated negotiations with the government on creating the conditions for elections, which should be held by the end of this year. Bau the talks stalled on Friday over the issue of control over the public broadcaster, RTCG. The opposition demanded the dismissal of the director and editorial team of the television news programs, whom they accuse of biased reporting. They also wanted the post of chief inspector in the intelligence service, the National Security Agency. Djukanovic's party has rejected both demands. Both the public TV and the security agency are considered vulnerable to abuses during election campaigns but Djukanovic's party was not ready to surrender its influence on them.