Nikolic: With EU help, Pristina to change decision (RTS)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has announced that Belgrade, with the help of the EU, will try to change the decision of the Pristina institutions on banning visits of Serbian officials to Kosovo during the election campaign, and that it will examine whether it should continue to take part in the negotiations if the decision is not changed. “Belgrade will try to change the decision of the institutions in Pristina, in cooperation with the EU, and if it isn’t changed, then we will, naturally, sit down to discuss whether we should continue with something that the administration in Pristina would be implementing completely independently,” Nikolic told journalists in Strasbourg following the meeting with the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Jean-Claude Mignon. Nikolic says Pristina, with this decision, made the elections irregular and he wonders whether it is possible to hold elections at all without a campaign. “That is not good. We have assumed different relations between Belgrade and Pristina, relations of trust, and we have assumed that elections will be absolutely democratic and regular. This raises the question of regularity of elections, along with all objections that I had conveyed to the PACE President,” said Nikolic. He has stated that Pristina’s conduct regarding the upcoming local elections and especially the decision to ban the visits of Serbian officials during the campaign is unacceptable, and he invited the CoE to help the elections to be regular and impartial. He has reminded that the state had invited the Serbs to take part in the election organized by Pristina, aiming to get legitimate bodies, recognized by the international community. We did it honestly, in difficult times, Nikolic said, adding that the other side is also expected to be honest. According to him, the behavior of Pristina towards the Serbs that have the right of vote is also unacceptable.

Possible withdrawal from negotiations (Danas)

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic has informed the ambassadors of western countries in Serbia that Pristina banned him yesterday to visit Strpce, where he was supposed to be on Friday, when the campaign for the local elections commences, Danas unofficially learns from sources close to the Serbian government. These sources announced that Dacic will send today a protest letter to the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, where, allegedly, he will announce, as one of the signatories of the Brussels agreement, the possibility of withdrawing from further negotiations with the Pristina colleague Hashim Thaqi. Several hours after Serbian Minister without portfolio in charge of Kosovo and Metohija Aleksandar Vulin had announced that Dacic will visit Strpce on Friday, and that the Serbs in the southern province wish to see most the First Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and that this will occur soon, Kosovo Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuqi told the Belgrade media that no Serbian official would be allowed to come to Kosovo from 3 October to the end of the campaign of the local elections, 1 November. Prior to the ban from Pristina, top state circles unofficially told Danas that the date of Vucic’s visit to Kosovo and Metohija is not mentioned for the time being, because it is part of the election strategy that Belgrade still doesn’t want to reveal. The state leadership doesn’t wish to comment the speculations that there is a quite election war between the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) on the ground. The EU headquarters deny yesterday’s announcements of the Pristina media that an urgent meeting between Serbian Prime Minister Dacic and Kosovo Prime Minister Thaqi should be held on Friday in Brussels over the problems in (non)implementing the Brussels agreement. As Danas was told, the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue continues at the level of working groups. Diplomatic sources speculate that contacts between Dacic and Thaqi prior to the elections on 3 November are examined, but the date has not been determined yet. Serbian President’s advisor Marko Djuric tells Danas that the problem of registering expelled Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija into the Kosovo poll has not been resolved yet. According to him, they agreed in Brussels two days ago the registration of 12,000 Serbs from north Kosovo, who have not participated in the elections organized by Pristina, into the Kosovo list, according to the data from the Serbian list. “We don’t have adequate documents, registries from the birth records and citizenship for all the displaced people who had applied for registration, but it is important to send a message that the internally displaced people are enabled to vote, because ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Metohija would be confirmed if they would not be able to take part in the elections. We will request that this issue is resolved in line with domestic and international practice,” says Marko Djuric.

Mihajlovic: EU on the move following Pristina’s decision (RTS)

The Director of the government Office for Media Relations Milivoje Mihajlovic told the morning broadcast of Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) that Pristina’s decision to ban Serbian officials to visit Kosovo and Metohija caused one of the most serious crises in the negotiations process between Belgrade and Pristina. Such decision, assesses Mihajlovic, harms the implementation of the Brussels agreement and the EU reaction is expected. Mihajlovic says the decision on how this crisis in the Brussels negotiations will be overcome is in the hands of Brussels and the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton. He announced that concrete moves by Belgrade towards the EU will follow already today. The local elections in Kosovo and Metohija are part of the Brussels agreement and, as Mihajlovic points out, they should be crowned with the formation of the Union of Serb municipalities that protects the interests of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. He assesses that it is obvious that the Pristina authorities are undertaking steps that are against the interests of the survival of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija.
Prime Minister Dacic’s visit to Kosovo and Metohija should have been a symbolic gesture aimed at motivating the Serbs to turn out for the elections and explaining why these elections are important for the survival of the Serb community. “If Pristina opposes such move, then it means that Pristina opposes the Brussels agreement,” said Mihajlovic. Speaking about the registration of internally displaced people on the eve of the local elections, Mihajlovic says this problem has been overcome and that 38,000 who are registered on these lists will be able to vote. Mihajlovic stresses the Serbian Government equally treats all Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija and has one motive – for Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija to live in better conditions than in the past. As regards the local elections in Belgrade, they will certainly be held but it depends on agreement whether they will be held within a month or three. He says he doesn’t know whether early parliamentary elections will be held at the same time, but he is sure that they will not be held this year and probably not for the most part of next year. The Serbian Government, as he explained, has entered a serious reform cycle that would be completely impeded or slowed down by elections. “It is not the interest of the ruling coalition to have elections soon,” assessed Mihajlovic.

The Constitution and Peaceful Re-integrations (Politika, by Slobodan P. Orlovic, lecturer at the Law Faculty of the Novi Sad University)

The constant offensive against the Serbian Constitution is not a novelty, but the novelty is that now “shots” are coming from political weapons. The Constitution is, in this sense, being targeted by the “peaceful re-integration” of the northern part of the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija. Just where is this re-integration a return to? As things are going – it leads to the self-styled “Kosovo republic.” This process doesn’t resemble any of the publicly mentioned “models-norms” of peaceful resolution of European political crises. Let me mention two. Northern Ireland is still within the United Kingdom, even though, according to the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland, the entire island of Ireland (…) is part of the Irish nation. According to the Constitution of Cyprus, the territory of the Republic of Cyprus includes the whole island of Cyprus, even though in the northern part (more than a third) of the island that republic has no authority. Both states are EU members, which means that this organization knows and accepts into its membership states that also have a conflict between their constitutions and the “state-of-affairs on the ground.” The status of the northern part of the province of Kosovo-Metohija (and what follows) is easily, however, compared with the peaceful re-integration of “Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and West Srem” into the constitutional-legal system of the Republic of Croatia (1995-1998).
Former peaceful and gradual dispossession of bodies of authority of the remaining part of the former self-proclaimed “Republic of Serbian Krajina” was not in any kind of dispute with the then Serbian Constitution (1990). Serbia, apart from the constitutional obligation to “maintain ties” with the Serbs in the “Republic of Serbian Krajina” (and in all other parts of the former Yugoslavia), aiming towards the preservation of their Serbian identity, didn’t have any other constitutional obligations. “Re-integration of the Croatian Danube Riverbank” in the eastern part of the “Republic of Serbian Krajina” was viewed as an internal matter of another state and was considered certainly better than the death, destruction and expulsion brought on earlier by Croatia’s “Operation Storm”… Serbia almost didn’t have anyone there to maintain ties with. The practically sovereign, but politically non-recognized, Serbian territory was transferred in only one part of Croatia: with the Croatian Constitution, laws and with less and less Serbs. Today, the range of Serbian political influence in Croatia is bare participation in the local government, if we neglect the Golgotha of the crisis over Cyrillic in Vukovar. “Peaceful re-integration” of northern Kosovo-Metohija could be another name for the implementation of the Brussels agreement. The mainstreams have already been seen: dispossession of factual Serbian (state) authority and placing the people under the constitution and laws of the “Kosovo republic.” According to the example of “Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and West Srem,” with time, along with KFOR and EULEX, more and more Serbs will be leaving northern Kosovo. Therefore, everything is very much alike, except for the issue of constitutionality. The present Constitution doesn’t remind state bodies to maintain cultural ties with the Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, but orders them to treat them as all other citizens in Serbia. Unlike the relationship towards the trans-Danube territories, the Serbian Constitution has the biggest guarantees of the territorial integrity of the state, whose inalienable part is also the province of Kosovo-Metohija. But here too, the highest range of the authority of the Serbs is to tie them down to the local level – in the future “Union of Serbian Municipalities.” There are many elaborations of this rupture of politics with the Constitution. Let us skip the cries that we are a small, weak and poor nation and those others who claim the opposite, and clarify this schism in two ways. It looks like our state has silently suspended the Constitution in the province of Kosovo-Metohija, and for an indefinite period. Such a political act is called in constitutional theory a coup and it usually ends in a “counter-coup.” It is also known that the coup against the last Obrenovic (Serbian King) was the most known of all the state coups in Serbian history. Therefore, we must return to the “constitutional state” either by respecting the Constitution, by legally amending it, or by “awakening” the Constitutional Court. Politics are still on the move.
Another explanation of the conflict between this policy and the Constitution is the simple usage of political despondency (apathy) of the nation. Politics knows that the “this nation is definitely not crazy” on the issue of Kosovo-Metohija, but also holds that it is tired with stagnation, retrogression and crises. Still, there can’t be so much political apathy with the Serbs for them to hand over the creation of the Constitution and their authority to someone else. Such plans, if they exist, will backfire on the pride of this remaining people’s sovereignty.