Belgrade Media Report 26 August
LOCAL PRESS
Ivanovic: I am not guilty (RTS)
The SDP leader of the Oliver Ivanovic has pleaded not guilty before the Basic Court in Kosovska Mitrovica on all counts of the indictment against him. Responding to the question posed by Judge Roksana Komsa whether he feels guilty, Ivanovic said: “I am absolutely not guilty”. The other four indicted Serbs Dragoljub Delibasic, father and son Ilija and Nebojsa Vujacic and Aleksandar Lazovic also pleaded not guilty for the counts they are charged with. Reading the charges, Prosecutor Jonathan Ratel said that Ivanovic was indicted on suspicion that he committed criminal offences on 14 April 1999 in Kosovska Mitrovica. According to the indictment, Ivanovic was the leader of a paramilitary police unit. He ordered the murder of a group of Albanians, said Prosecutor Ratel. “That way, the defendant committed a war crime against the civilian population…This criminal offence is presently punishable with five years in prison,” said Ratel. Police commander in Mitrovica Dragoljub Delibasic and Oliver Ivanovic, as the leader of the Serb paramilitary group known as the “bridge watchers” incited in February 2000 intrusion into several buildings in the northern part of Mitrovica, so they could forcibly drive out Albanian families. Eleven Albanians were killed then, and four were wounded, said Prosecutor Ratel. In this count of the indictment, Delibasic and Ivanovic are charged with inciting the execution of a criminal offense instigated by ethnic motives. The prison sentence for this count is not less than 10 years. The other three defendants Ilija and Nebojsa Vujacic and Aleksandar Lazovic are charged with aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder with infliction of serious bodily injury. Following the preliminary hearing, the defense has one month to deliver remarks along with evidence after which Judge Roksana Komsa will decide whether she will resume or suspend the trial.
EULEX spokesperson Dragana Nikolic Solomon has stated that detention to Oliver Ivanovic has been extended for two more months.
Djuric: Serbia firmly with Ivanovic and four defendants (Tanjug)
The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric has stated in Kosovska Mitrovica that the state of Serbia stands for the five Serbs who are on trial, and he expressed belief that they will prove their innocence in a fair procedure. Serbia demands their release until the completion of the trial and that they be given enough time to prepare the defense, Djuric stressed after the hearing. He added that the prosecution had 15 years to prepare “something that we deem to be no serious evidence”. At the same time, we refute the attempts to show as crimes anything that the Serb people were doing in defending themselves and trying to survive in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the attempts to establish an artificial balance between the deeds of the criminals who happened to be Albanians processed in other cases, and this particular case, Djuric said. Commenting on cooperation between the Serbs in northern Kosovo and EULEX, Djuric said that the Kosovo Serbs had sent a message of concern over certain moves by EULEX, adding that it is no secret that there isn’t enough trust between part of Kosovo residents and EULEX. “I think that the responsibility also lies with the EULEX members, their representatives should not to create with their behavior additional uncertainty, but should ensure normal flow of the political process of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, which is aimed at normalization and not deepening of divisions and creation of fear,” concluded Djuric.
Dacic and Djuric to attend Security Council session on Kosovo and Metohija (Novosti)
The Serbian delegation will be headed by Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic at the UN Security Council session on Kosovo and Metohija, scheduled for 29 August. He will travel to New York directly from Berlin, where a day earlier, he will be participating with Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in the work of the Conference on West Balkans, hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Dacic will be joined to the East River by the Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric, and the Serbian officials will use the opportunity to once again present before the most influential world countries the problems faced by the Serbs in the province. According to Novosti, Dacic will seek support for the final formation of the Union of Serb Municipalities, in accordance with the Brussels agreement. Dacic will also invite the SC members to support the proposal of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to establish a special court for war crimes committed by the KLA in Kosovo. Ban Ki-moon will present at Friday’s SC session the regular quarterly report on the situation in the southern Serbian province where he calls Belgrade and Pristina to resume the dialogue on unresolved issues, after the break due to the Kosovo elections.
Cyprus will not change stand on Kosovo and Metohija (Novosti)
“The Republic of Cyprus supports Serbia’s EU integrations. We believe Serbia will become an EU member-state and we support the perseverance of its government and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on that path, said Cypriot Ambassador to Serbia Nafsika Krusti. She recalled that Cyprus is one of the five states which don’t support independence of Kosovo, adding that such a stand will not be changed. She had talks with the Cacak Mayor Vojislav Ilic, and the town’s authorities on investments of Cyprus in that region.
Odalovic: Serbia committed to missing persons’ issue (Tanjug)
“Serbia is absolutely committed to the search for a solution to the missing persons’ issue and not a single body or individual has ever done anything to prevent it,” the Chairman of the Commission on Missing Persons of the Government of the Republic of Serbia Veljko Odalovic said ahead of the conference on the matter due to take place in Mostar on Friday. Odalovic said that during the conference, the presidents of Serbia, B&H and Montenegro should sign a declaration on the role of the state in the search for a solution to the missing persons’ issue in cases of armed conflicts and violation of human rights, adding that the declaration should encourage others to take on a responsible and professional approach to the problem. The declaration will be signed by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, Chairman of the B&H Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic and Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic in the course of the conference to mark the International Day of the Disappeared observed on 30 August. “The document should contribute to improvement of the general situation and restoration of trust because the solution to the fate of missing persons is an important prerequisite for any progress, let alone reconciliation in the region. For as long as 11,000 people are still recorded as missing and there are hundreds of thousands of people who are directly interested in the search for a solution to the issue, we cannot expect a more serious stabilization,” Odalovic told Tanjug. The authorities insist on establishment of responsibility for crimes, Odalovic said and underscored that Serbia exchanges all information it obtains with relevant bodies, courts and the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office. According to him, this is a serious problem in the territory of former Yugoslavia as the number of missing persons varies, from 1,700 people in Kosovo and Metohija and 2,500 people in Croatia, while the rest of them were reported missing in B&H. Serbia and Croatia have signed an inter-governmental agreement and have a mechanism to solve this problem, Odalovic said. The working group in charge of missing persons is operating within the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, he noted and added that Serbia is currently in the preparatory stage for signing the protocol with BiH. “Serbia is searching for its citizens gone missing in all areas of former Yugoslavia and it also has a legitimate right to demand a closure for the issue concerning the fate of missing persons whose families were banished from their homes,” he said. In the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, working groups are investigating the fate of 529 Serb and other non-Albanian citizens reported missing by their families, and not a single remain has been identified this year, Odalovic said and recalled that several days ago, Serbian authorities delivered 16 bodies at Merdare which were exhumed from the grave site in the village of Rudnica. He also announced that 18 more bodies will be delivered in the next ten days, which shows a responsible attitude of a responsible government. Odalovic noted that another serious problem lies in the fact that 5,000 bodies or bodily parts are still kept in morgues in Tuzla, Banja Luka, Pristina, Sarajevo and elsewhere, adding that these remains have not been identified. This issue is being tackled in cooperation with the International Commission on Missing Persons, he said. “We did not get a single piece of information from the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army and their archives concerning the fate of these people. The issues of the court and the prosecution of individuals responsible for war crimes are exceptionally important, as well as the answer to questions such as whether the process would produce the answers, the developments concerning the Yellow House, the number of people who were taken to Albania, whether there was any trafficking involved and the location of the remains - these are all the answers we expect to get from others,” he specified. He underlined that Serbia opened the archives and that over 2,000 documents were handed over to Pristina alone. The declaration on missing persons should add a new quality to the search because the leaders of the countries in the region would call on their governments and authorities to attach even more attention to this matter, Odalovic said.
REGIONAL PRESS
Dissatisfied citizens protest before OHR (Oslobodjenje)
Some thirty citizens gathered yesterday before the Office of the High Representative (OHR), where with peaceful protest they expressed their dissatisfaction with the work of the OHR, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), and High Representative Valentin Inzko. The area around the building was secured by several police officers. Citizens inter alia said that the international community and High Representative are doing nothing to prevent corruption and condemned local politicians who for years have lived at B&H citizens’ expense, and provide good jobs and a better life for themselves and their families while average people “have not even enough for rolls.” ‘The international community for two decades has not done anything concrete for BiH’s betterment, to the contrary, the lack of work by this organization has led the country into an ever worse state,” said Drenko Koristovic, representative of the B&H Citizens’ Council. “The OHR and High Representative have powers to do everything to make this country successful, or give youth greater opportunities. However, this isn’t happening. How much can we see, in general they don’t react to the action of a completely criminal executive government in B&H at all levels, and they have the powers, means, strength, conditions to prevent this. The international community is, with this, absolutely certainly complicit to crime,” said Koristovic. Fehim Lovic, member of the FB&H citizens’ plenum, condemned individual political parties for “disrupting civic ranks” with their tossing out of their activists in the plenum. “This isn’t good at all for the goals we set in February. Someone obviously wants to destroy the citizens’ insurgency,” said Lovic.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
Kosovo Serb leader pleads not guilty to war crimes (eubusiness.com, 26 August 2014)
(KOSOVSKA MITROVICA) - A top Kosovo Serb politician pleaded not guilty to charges of war crimes against ethnic Albanians in 1999 and 2000 at the start of his trial here Tuesday.
"I am absolutely not guilty," Oliver Ivanovic told an EU tribunal in the northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica.
Four other ethnic Serbs, being tried alongside Ivanovic, have also all pleaded not guilty.
"Ivanovic is impatient to present his defence and to prove that he could not have had any link with the claims that have been made against him," his lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic told reporters before opening of the trial.
The 61-year-old Ivanovic, who is considered a political moderate, is the first senior Kosovo Serb official to be charged and tried by the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) on suspicion of war crimes against ethnic Albanians.
EULEX, the EU's police and justice mission in the region, has the power to step in and take on cases that the local judiciary and police are unable to handle because of their sensitive nature.
Ivanovic, a former Serbian secretary for Kosovo, was elected in December 2013 as municipal councillor in the Serb-majority northern Kosovska Mitrovica region.
But in January he was arrested and charged with war crimes and murder.
After the 1998-1999 war Ivanovic became a key interlocutor with NATO, the UN and later the EU and was seen as backing dialogue with Kosovo Albanian community.
However, he was also among the organisers of a now-disbanded Kosovo Serb group of vigilantes known as "Bridgewatchers", whose members were suspected of taking part in violence against ethnic Albanians.
Some 120,000 ethnic Serbs live in Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and which counts 1.8 million inhabitants -- most of them ethnic Albanians.
Kosovo has been recognised by more than 100 countries, including the United States and a majority of the EU states.
Serbia Rebuffs Merkel's EU Criticism (BIRN, 25 August 2014)
Belgrade responded to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement that Balkan countries are conducting reforms at a “snail's pace” by insisting that Serbia was making quick progress.
Jadranka Joksimovic, the Serbian minister in charge of EU integration, said on Monday that contrary to the impression given by Merkel, Belgrade was rapidly implementing the tough but necessary reforms that will help the country on its way to EU membership.
“Both the EU and Germany see that. The regional approach, which is important, certainly in its entirety provides a slightly different picture of the pace of reforms,” Joksimovic told daily newspaper Danas.
“We expect to be judged in relation to our own efforts and results, it is the only fair and rational approach in the process,” she added.
Her statement came after Merkel said that, although there has been some progress in the Balkan region, when it comes to the reforms related to the EU integration process, “it goes at a snail's pace”.
Top Serbian officials will have the chance to put their case Merkel in person in Berlin on Thursday at a conference on the economic potential and prospects of the Western Balkan countries.
The conference will bring together representatives from Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia.
Meanwhile Joksimovic also said that she does not expect that the pace of Belgrade’s EU integration process will be slowed due to country’s stance on Ukraine and Russia.
Serbia has resisted Western pressure to impose sanctions on Russia and has adopted a neutral stance on the crisis in Ukraine.
Last week, the government received a memo from Oskar Benedikt, deputy head of European Union delegation to Serbia, asking Belgrade not to make use of Moscow’s ban on EU goods to expand exports to the Russian market.
He added that joining the EU is the main goal for Belgrade, but said Serbia intended to “maintain good relations with the Russian Federation”.
The European Commission is due to deliver its annual progress report on Serbia on October 8.
Local experts and NGOs believe that the report will highlight Serbia’s failure to follow the EU position on Russia and Ukraine, but also the lack of reforms in the fight against corruption, political pressures on judiciary and the media, and the weak implementation of adopted laws.
Russian Sappers Defuse Almost 300 Projectiles in Serbia This Year (RIA Novosti, by Sergei Karpov, 25 August 2014)
MOSCOW – Russian Emergencies Ministry Sappers have defused about 300 projectiles of various calibers in Serbia this year, a ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti on Monday.
"The experts examined an area of more than 400,000 square meters and neutralized 283 explosive objects," the spokesman said.
The group has been defusing projectiles in Serbia since 2008, and in the town of Paracin, 150 kilometers south of Belgrade, since 2009. Sappers are seeking and defusing explosive objects that have been left buried in the ground since the First and Second World Wars, the NATO bombing of 1999 and an explosion at a local army warehouse in 2006. The mission is expected to end in 2017.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry cooperates with many international organizations, such as the UN Office for the Organization of Humanitarian Affairs and the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Programme, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Stepanov said.
One of the largest international humanitarian operations conducted by the ministry was to help the people of Yugoslavia, who suffered from the 1999 NATO bombing. Russia worked with Switzerland, Greece and Austria in the battle-torn country in the spring and summer of 1999.
Macedonia Closer to Constitutional Changes (BIRN, by Sinisa Jakov Marusic, 26 August 2014)
Macedonia's parliament is likely to push ahead with constitutional changes this week, on defining marriage as a strictly heterosexual union, on setting up a tax haven, and other issues.
Despite the absence of opposition legislators, a plenary session of the Macedonian parliament is expected to approve a package of seven government-proposed changes to the constitution on Wednesday or Thursday.
One of the proposed changes, which has drawn criticism from human rights activists, will define marriage more narrowly as a union strictly between one man and one woman.
“The vast majority of Macedonian citizens think of marriage this way,” an MP from the ruling VMRO DPMNE party, Vlatko Gjorcev, said on Monday.
The broad goal was to block any future moves towards same sex adoptions of children, he said, adding that inserting this new, stricter definition of marriage into the constitution will make it much harder to make such changes in future, as they would then require a two-thirds majority in parliament.
Another change will allow for the opening of an “international financial zone” - in effect a tax haven - aimed at encouraging wealthy companies to move operations to Macedonia.
“This will have a double benefit. First, it will establish Macedonian on the international financial map as a destination for international banks, investment funds and corporations, and second, it will create quality jobs,” Finance Minister Zoran Stavreski told the parliamentary commission on the proposed changes on Monday.
He dismissed fears that creating such a zone would turn Macedonia into off-shore destination for criminal money.
Macedonia's ruling parties, led by Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE, made the first steps towards enacting constitutional changes in July, when a two-thirds majority of MPs in parliament gave a green light for them to proceed.
After of the passage of the proposed changes on Monday in a dedicated parliamentary commission, the rest of parliament will almost certainly adopt the draft changes in a plenary session later this week.
This is unlikely to pose much of a problem for the ruling parties as this time only a simple majority among the 123 MPs is needed.
After 30 days left aside for public discussion, the amendments will be put to a vote in parliament one last time.
Another change removes the Justice Minister from the Court Council, the body that appoints judges, as a way of reducing political influence on the courts.
A further change limits the rate of public debt to 60 per cent of GDP and the budget deficit to 3 per cent of GDP.
Another change aims to introduce a so-called "constitutional complaint" mechanism whereby people or institutions can file complaints against the authorities.
Critic of the changes say it is wrong to tamper with the constitution when opposition parties are not present in the chamber.
“We need a full parliament for something as significant as constitutional changes,” Ana Janevska Deleva, from the NGO Transparency Macedonia, told Radio Free Europe.
The opposition, led by the Social Democrats, SDSM, recently decided to continue its boycott of parliament, which began after April’s early general and presidential elections.
The opposition refused to take up its seats in parliament, accusing Gruevski and his VMRO DPMNE party of electoral fraud.
Bosnia's Embattled Dairy Farmers Seek New Markets (BIRN, by Elvira M. Jukic, 26 August 2014)
Shut out of Croatia since Zagreb joined the European Union last July, hard-pressed Bosnian dairy farmers are eying alternative markets as far away as Russia.
Bosnian dairy farmers have lost around 15 million euro a year since neighbouring Croatia joined the European Union and started enforcing food and veterinary standards that Bosnia does not meet.
“Around 60 to 70 per cent of milk production in Bosnia and Herzegovina was exported to Croatia before July 1 last year. That was 64 million litres of milk alone,” Duljko Hasic, of the Bosnian Foreign Trade Chamber, recalled.
“Now we have to find alternative markets for all of that,” he added.
Hasic said Bosnian institutions should have prepared themselves for the challenge of meeting EU food standards long before Croatia joined the EU last summer.
Once Bosnia creates the right conditions, EU officials will come to Bosnia and check whether its producers meet European standards.
So far, this has not happened, although more than a year has passed since domestic producers were banned from exporting to Croatia.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be able to ask the EU Food and Veterinary Office to come to inspect until the preparations are finished,” Hasic noted.
In the meantime, some milk farmers have found alternatives for their exports to the so-called CEFTA countries.
“However, those countries are moving forward in enforcing tougher standards and although they do not block Bosnian exports, we stand to lose those markets as well,” he warned.
One of the dairy companies that was banned from the Croatian market after it joined the EU was the company Milkos.
“We managed to find alternative markets in Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro or Serbia,” Emir Vilic, from Milkos, said.
“But it took us three to four months to switch to them, although most of us succeeded in the end,” he added.
Vilic added many milk producers expected the ban with Croatia to be lifted this year but, according to information, this looks unlikely even by the end of the 2015.
Now the country's dairy producers are eyeing the market in Russia, which recently banned the import of foodstuffs from the EU.
“Now the possibility of exporting to Russia is opening up,” Vilic said. “But Russian veterinary inspections will have to come and estimate whether we meet their standards," he noted. "It could a be a limitless market," he concluded, hopefully.