LOCAL PRESS

 

Dacic: Serbia’s foreign policy priority is EU membership (Tanjug)

Full membership in the EU is the key foreign policy priority for Serbia, and the vision of a common European future is a vision shared by all of us in the Western Balkans, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Friday. At an annual meeting of foreign ministers of the Visegrad Group and Western Balkan states in Bratislava, Dacic said that Serbia is carrying out expedited reforms to achieve the highest European standards in all fields and thereby meet the EU membership criteria. “The Serbian government’s plan to end the economic crisis is based on austerity measures, as well as on more substantial budget revenues, mostly through tax collection. Development of the economy - and establishment of sustainable, good governance as a prerequisite for that - is, undoubtedly, among the key issues in the context of the development of the Western Balkan region as a whole,” said Dacic, who heads the Serbian delegation attending the Bratislava meeting. The Serbian Foreign Minister said that this meeting was another opportunity for a substantial exchange of opinions among the Visegrad Group member states and the foreign ministers of Western Balkan states on the current political and economic topics. Dacic said that he is confident that the exchange of opinions at the Bratislava meeting - in particular the fact that a new regional structure, the Western Balkans Fund, is being established - will contribute to an initiation of a series of regional projects whose implementation will additionally encourage the development of stability and mutual cooperation, including economic progress in the region. Implementation of successful internal reforms aimed at establishing efficient economic systems is an interest shared by all in the Western Balkans as it will make it possible for living standards and the general quality of life to improve, Dacic concluded.

 

Djuric: Ivanovic is victim of “rule of law” in Kosovo (RTS)

The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric has told the morning broadcast of Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) that the allegations that the EULEX prosecutor had forged documents against Oliver Ivanovic are disturbing and bring into question the rule of law in Kosovo and Metohija. Djuric said it was necessary to implement part of the Brussels agreement that implies the establishment of courts and prosecutions in Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo and Metohija, where Serbs will be represented proportionally to the ethnic structure of the population. Djuric stressed that the international judiciary cannot replace the domestic judiciary in Kosovo and Metohija. He recalled that Politika published that it had documents that prove that the Serbian Interior Ministry’s documentation was forged and reiterated that it is necessary for the judicial bodies to examine these allegations and determine the truth. The Serbian government offered guarantees for Ivanovic’s release several months ago, but they were not accepted, which puts Ivanovic in a subordinate position in relation to the prosecution that had 15 years to prepare for this case, while Ivanovic will have at his disposal only two months, perhaps even less, said Djuric. He pointed that a bad message was being sent since Ivanovic, who is one of the most moderate Serb politicians in Kosovo and Metohija, is innocent. Djuric pointed out that Ivanovic is not the only victim, as there is a wider problem related to the rule of law in Kosovo and Metohija, where there are dozens of people with impunity for crimes, while dozens are in prison without substantial and real reason. “EULEX is perhaps better than the Pristina judges, but it certainly is not better than the Serb judges,” said Djuric. He pointed out that the goals are the formation of the Union of Serb Municipalities, continued help and fight for our nation in Kosovo and Metohija, and “participation in the provincial institutions so our influence would be greater” and recalled that 110,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo and Metohija. Commenting the tearing down of five Serb houses in Djakovica, Djuric said he is stunned with the cynicism of local Albanian representatives, because the local self-administration in Djakovica torn down these houses and it is not true that these houses are in poor condition. Djuric pointed out that there is not a single policeman in Klina, Istok and in many municipalities in Kosovo and Metohija, and that the only way to change this is participation in the provincial institutions.

 

Kerry: U.S. grateful to Serbia for support in battle against Islamists (Novosti/Tanjug)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sent a letter to Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in which, on behalf of the U.S. president, he thanks Serbia for its support to the international coalition in battle against extremist organization the Islamic State, for Serbia’s dedication to international peace and its resolve to combat terrorism. Kerry also commended the Serbian Prime Minister’s role of a leader in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, assessing that full implementation of the Brussels agreement of April 2013 would significantly speed up Serbia’s EU integrations and bring more stability in the region. He wrote that the U.S. was ready to cooperate with Serbia during its OSCE presidency in 2015 and that the consultative leadership of the OSCE was very important at the time of big security challenges in Europe.

 

What is rotten in EULEX (Politika, by Dusan Teleskovic)

Everything that is wrong in the EULEX Mission in Kosovo has been brought out in the open over the past days. Accusations for corruption, persecution of whistleblowers, but also forging of evidence in the case against Oliver Ivanovic, show that international prosecutors and judges in Kosovo have accepted the local way of behavior instead of introducing legal standards from their countries of origin. The mission suffered the first blow when the Pristina daily Koha Ditore published on Monday that Great Britain’s prosecutor Maria Bamieh collected evidence on how two high officials of the EULEX Mission had received bribes in order to close at least three big criminal cases. Tapping the participants of several criminal operations, the Department for combatting corruption also intercepted conversations of the EULEX Chief Prosecutor Jaroslava Novotny and the President of the Assembly of Judges Francesco Flora, who met with different mediators towards covering up serious crimes. Prosecutor Bamieh also collected concrete material evidence for the Kosovo Special Prosecutor Jonathan Ratel who had allegedly interfered with the investigation against Novotny and Flora. However, instead of receiving recognition for conscientious and responsible work, Maria Bamieh was punished. Proceedings were launched against her for vehicle parking and the arrival of her daughter to the prosecutor’s office. According to Koha Ditore, in order to re-open the investigations that she had launched, it is necessary to intervene directly from Brussels. Instead of pressure to get things untangled, the statement by the EU High Representative’s spokesperson Maja Kocijancic arrived from Brussels that “everyone is innocent until proven otherwise”, including EULEX. Oliver Ivanovic has probably bitterly laughed at this statement in Mitrovica prison. Namely, he has been in detention for nine months now, while EULEX had been giving an excuse for six months that it cannot release him from detention because there had not yet been an indictment against him. Yet, now, when there is an indictment, Politika discovered that the EULEX prosecutor grossly forged statements from the letter from the Serbian Interior Ministry, using only the part of the sentence that supported its intention to accuse Ivanovic for acts for which he lacks evidence. What is rotten in the EULEX Mission? Many recall that this mission has been problematic from the very beginning as the legal framework according to which official Brussels would take over the competencies from the UN, especially insisted on by the EU states that have not recognized Kosovo (Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Greece and Cyprus). The so-called six-point plan, signed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the then Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic, offered the legal basis. This provided the framework by which EULEX took over the competencies of UNMIK, which was described at the time as non-functional and incompetent, even though it had nearly 5,000 employees while EULEX has much less. European leaders promised they would stabilize Kosovo with EULEX and build institutions, especially the police, prosecution and judiciary. Now it is becoming clear how little they succeeded in this. Some European states knew more about that than their officials publicly admitted. Former EULEX head Bernd Borchardt was not the first who left Kosovo before his mandate expired. This former deputy head of the Verification mission for Kosovo, led by William Walker in 1999 (this mission’s report later on served as one of the excuses for the bombardment of Yugoslavia), was later the representative of the German office in Kosovo, and between 2007 and 2010 this country’s ambassador in Albania. Precisely during his mandate in Kosovo there had been abuses pointed to now by prosecutor Bamieh. Politika’s interlocutors from international circles in Kosovo claim that especially disputable had been unsuccessful proceedings against Fatmir Limaj, as well as witness protection in this and other cases. Limaj was acquitted of issuing orders and torturing Serb and Albanian civilians, as well as Serb soldiers and policemen in one camp in Klecka, Lipljan municipality, with the explanation that there is no “reliable evidence” of his guilt. The key witness was found dead during the trial, under very suspicious circumstances, and the Special Prosecutor Jonathan Ratel announced that the prosecution accepts this judgment. One of Politika’s interlocutors from Pristina figuratively explained how witness protection looked like in Kosovo, which was performed by EULEX: They would “protect” the witness in a house downtown Pristina in front of which they would place a policeman with a dog. The witness would usually quickly change his/her mind and change the testimony. Politika’s interlocutor especially notes that it was whispered in Pristina about a suspicious change of EULEX prosecutors and judges in various cases, which eventually led to many acquittals. Politika’s interlocutor also paraphrased a detail from Borchardt’s farewell dinner in Pristina when the now former EULEX head drew a parallel between the case of Oliver Ivanovic and the Drenica group. This, according to him, was the key evidence that EULEX is “balanced” between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbs. As if the standard for criminal proceedings anywhere in the world is an equal number of accusations of two opposing sides, and not collected evidence for crimes, regardless of who committed them.

 

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Confirmed alliance between SNSD and HDZ B&H (Danas/BHRT)

The leaders of the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) and the Party of Independent Social-Democrats RS Dragan Covic and Milorad Dodik agreed yesterday in Mostar that the two parties are going to continue its current alliance and “be the main authority at the B&H level”, announced, on his Twitter account, chairman of the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska (RS) Igor Radojicic, reports media in Banja Luka. Covic, who considers that the party led by him and he have been the victims for the last four years of electoral engineering, which produced the representatives of the Croats in B&H institutions, who were not chosen by the Croats in B&H, considers that the federalization of B&H is unavoidable. In an interview with BHRT, Covic, explaining his commitment to federalization, said that the current situation is unsustainable and that the federalization would solve a serious problem of dysfunctionality and irrationality of B&H. He emphasized that the HDZ B&H as well as their coalition partner HNS “strongly support B&H, and constantly keep reminding that this is our homeland” and those “who want to destroy the Croats as a political nation’ are destroying B&H. SNSD and Milorad Dodik support HDZ’s advocacy for the federalization of B&H and the formation of the third Croat entity. The newly elected Serb member of the B&H Presidency Mladen Ivanic has nothing against this requirement by the HDZ B&H, providing that it does not affect the RS, while its coalition partner the Alliance for Change, leader of the Serb Democratic Party, Mladen Bosic categorically opposes the idea of the third entity because he believes that its formation is not going leave the RS intact: if territorial claims on the RS would not come from Croats, they will come from Bosniaks, believes Bosic. Unlike the leaders of B&H Croats, who apparently believe that Dodik will establish the authorities in the RS, Bosic believes that the SDS can still break the current ruling coalition and find strength in the fact that his coalition partner Mladen Ivanic is now the representative of the Serb people in the Presidency, and has called the Democratic National Alliance Marko Pavic for talks. Dodik, the new-old RS President, after yesterday’s meeting in Mostar, announced that he will make public today in Zvornik the continuation of the government coalition with his former partners DNS - Marko Pavic and the Socialist Party - Petar Djokic.

 

Dodik: Chairman of the Council of Ministers will be a Bosniak (BHRT)

SNSD and HDZ will not perform in public institutions one without the other, the RS President Milorad Dodik said in an interview with BHRT. When asked to comment on the position of Bakir Izetbegovic that he would rather see the government between SDS and PDP instead of SNSD, Dodik answered: “I should say too, that I would rather see some other, but I’m not going to. I think we should turn to a fact which is still visible, and that is the reality that some kind of structure in B&H has been already established by the confirmation of alliances between the HDZ and SNSD, that alliance was visible before also. It is clearly stated that we will go together to all the places where we have common positions and joint candidates,” said Dodik. The SNSD and HDZ confirmed that they are indispensable factors at the B&H state level. We see the HDZ as the only interlocutor from the political structure of the Croat people. How I understand -and as I have been told - HDZ sees us in the same way, and will not negotiate with someone other Serb representatives. “Today, more than ever it is clear, maybe because there were various speculations - that SNSD and HDZ one without the other will not perform in joint institutions,” Dodik said.

About Bosniaks: “In any case, in regard to Bosniak people, of course, the SDA and Bakir Izetbegovic are the election winners, but there are some other possibilities too. It is the concern of Mr. Izetbegovic, not mine.”

About Radoncic: “Mr. Radoncic has obtained full political legitimacy of these elections, and it should be respected. As far as I am concerned, I absolutely do not think that he is surplus in all of this. I think that Mr. Radoncic could contribute to one good dynamic, and success of the bodies.”

About Ivanic: Ivanic’s statement that he will play a major role in the election mandate of the Council of Ministers (CoM) and he will determine the Serb representatives in CoM, Dodik commented: “I do not believe that Mr. Ivanic as an experienced politician could give such a stupid statement. But I do believe that the statement is essentially focused on how to calm his partners that are the election losers. The event in Mostar denied the possibility that he would decide.” Although he acknowledges the legitimacy of Mladen Ivanic as an elected member of the Presidency of B& H, Dodik, however, says: “If Ivanic pretends to represent the Serb political corpus, then I have to say that Zeljka Cvijanovic won 26 – 27.000 Serb votes more than he and that his victory is enabled by the Bosniak votes.”

About the Council of Ministers: “The Chairman of the Council of Ministers will certainly be a Bosniak. That political group or party that is going to enter into communion with the SNSD and HDZ B&H the House of Representatives of the PA B&H. Bosniak people will give Bosniaks the chair of the Council of Ministers and we will this respect. If this is the SDA, then they will give it, if it is some other ..., if this is Radoncic, then he will determine everything.”

On the RS prime minister: Tomorrow SNSD will meet with DNS and the SP in Zvornik. An agreement about the Assembly and about the Government of RS will be on the agenda: “I think we are going to talk about who could it be and where from. It’s not polite to mention the name because, as the President of RS I will be under constitutional obligation to propose the name only when I’m inaugurated, the SNSD has a candidate for the Prime Minister. The SNSD has the highest number in percentage and deserves the power in that coalition,” said Dodik.

On the SDA entering the RS Government: “We have a majority, and possibly of SDA representatives entering the RS government will solely depend on the arrangements at some other level, not on our need to have someone because we lack a voice. Do not misunderstand us we don’t lack anybody’s voice,” says Milorad Dodik.

 

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Atifete Jahjaga had been invited to take part in a meeting in Belgrade of the Trilateral Commission, a biannual gathering of influential business leaders, academics and policymakers (World Bulletin)

The president of Kosovo on Thursday turned down an invitation to make what would have been a historic first trip to former master Serbia, citing a political crisis that has left the young Balkan state without a new government for almost five months.

Atifete Jahjaga had been invited to take part in a meeting in Belgrade of the Trilateral Commission, a biannual gathering of influential business leaders, academics and policymakers, starting on Friday.

The visit would have been the first by a Kosovo head of state since the former Serbian province broke away in war in 1999 and declared independence with the backing of the West in 2008. Serbia does not recognise Kosovo but has softened policy towards its new neighbour in exchange for closer integration with the European Union.

Jahjaga is leading efforts to end a political impasse in Kosovo since a general election in early June, with the outgoing ruling party and its opponents at odds over who gets to form the next government.

"The president has decided not to participate in the conference because of the situation in the country and the inability to create new institutions," said her spokesman, Arber Vllahiu.

The political deadlock in Kosovo has halted legislation and put further pressure on the economy, with a deadline looming for the 2015 budget.

Parties are arguing over the wording of the constitution on who gets the first bite at forming a government, and weeks of talks chaired by Jahjaga have so far failed to produce a deal that would avert another election.

 

Bosnians Punished Parties in Power, Panel Says (BIRN, by Elvira M. Jukic, 30 October 2014)

The recent elections showed that Bosnians voted against the incumbent political parties rather than for the ones that won, a panel discussion organised by psychologists has heard.

Economic issues in the election campaigns of the parties in Bosnia did not decide the outcome of the recent general election. Instead, voters punished the parties that held power over the last four years.

This was one of the main conclusions of a public debate on the elections in Sarajevo organised by the Union of Psychologists.

Psychologist and political analyst Srdjan Puhalo said votes “against" parties decided the election, "which is why the Social Democratic Party failed and why the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats did worse [than in 2010].

“When we survey public opinion, the first question is what the biggest problems are, and the answer is always unemployment, the economic crisis, corruption and crime... but in the elections all these problems suddenly vanish and other motives for voting appear,” he noted.

Puhalo argued that after years of ethnic divisions, three closed circles of public opinion had been created in the country, which focus on themselves.

“For example, in the February protests – to be honest there were only a few people in Banja Luka – among Croats it was the same – and then the spin started about the [protests as] attempts to destabilize Republika Srpska – and when such climate is created there is no space for rational questions,” he said.

Puhalo said the main parties accepted that the economy was more important than nationalistic topics, which was why many politicians promised to create thousands of jobs.

However, many participants of the debate agreed that people in Bosnia lack a political culture of choosing wisely and showing politicians that citizens can speak through elections.

“The turnout of around 50 per cent was no different than in some other Western countries,” Puhalo observed.

“The turnout is only big... when you have political culture - and political culture is something that is being learned... There has to be a climate to punish the bad and give new ones a chance.”

One conclusion of the debate was that democratization and creation of a political culture is a process that has to be done step by step.

The solution, the debate heard, lies in civic activism, in people seeking their rights in solidarity with a new generation of politicians.

Ibrahim Prohic, political analyst and head of the Association of Psychologists in Bosnia's Federation entity, added that the crisis in Bosnia would not be solved by the politicians alone.

“We have a crisis... in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said. “If politics cannot solve that then who can? It can be solved with politics in combination with a movement. Until there is a movement which has a system, it cannot be solved.”

The Union of Psychologists plans to hold further monthly discussions on topics that are important to the country.

 

The Chance for a Multi-Ethnic Bosnia (Anadolu Agency, 30 October 2014)

In mid-October, Bosnia and Herzegovina held national elections. The scant coverage in Western media tended to highlight the fact that "nationalists" had captured the Bosniak (Muslim), Serb, and Croat seats in the ceremonial tripartite presidency. Beyond the headlines, however, several larger developments are occurring that are more important to Europe and the U.S.

The most recent national census, whose results are due for publication early next year, is likely to show that Bosnia has become, after Albania and Kosovo, the third country in Europe with a Muslim majority population. Moreover, after a bloody civil war with foreign intervention in the early 1990s, followed by two decades of tutelage from the international community, Bosnia is making fitful progress, but still needs help to become a "normal" country. The moment has come for energetic engagement by the U.S. and the European Union to help Bosnia achieve that normalcy and move definitively toward membership in NATO and the EU.

An examination of the election results reveals a vibrant political scene. The Democratic Front, a reform effort founded last year by Željko Komšić, the Croat member of the presidency, won the second largest number of votes in the Federation, the Muslim-Croat entity, and fourth nationally. The reformer Komšić, limited to two terms, was succeeded in the Croat seat on the presidency by the nationalist party boss Dragan Čović, with 52 percent of the vote.

In the Republika Srpska, the Serb half of the country, entity president Milorad Dodik, a vocal secessionist, came within a hair of being unseated. His chosen candidate for the Serb seat on the national presidency was edged out by Mladen Ivanić, a hard-line veteran politician who is nonetheless more inclined toward Europe.

Until the prerogatives of the national government are strengthened, the direction of the country will be determined at the entity level, especially by the composition of the Federation government. The Bosniak Party of Democratic Action headed by Bakir Izetbegović, son of the revered war-time Bosniak leader, will command the greatest number of parliamentary seats, but a majority coalition of other parties is not out of the question. It took 17 months of horse-trading to form a government after the 2010 elections, an unseemly spectacle the country would do well not to repeat. Fortunately, there are a few high-profile technocrats already occupying senior positions in leading parties who could be tapped to run the Federation government.

There is widespread disillusionment with a corrupt alliance of nationalist politicians, big money, coopted media, and organized crime. Last February, widespread rioting broke out, and in May the government's handling of relief efforts after massive flooding brought renewed criticism of ineptitude and lack of political accountability. In October only 54 percent of eligible Bosnian voters exercised their franchise.

Moreover, the hopelessly complex governmental and electoral system, created by the Dayton Accords in 1995 and subsequently elaborated in an election law, cries out for reform. Such reform must occur within the geographical borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dodik's periodic call for a referendum on secession of the Republika Srpska is anathema to Washington. Before Serbian aggression ignited the war in 1992, on the territory of what is now the Serb-dominated entity there was a Bosniak Muslim plurality. The only reason a referendum today might yield a majority in favor of secession is the murder during the war of 100,000 Muslims and the "ethnic cleansing" of a million more.

The demands of nationalist Croats appear less extreme, but would also be fatal to the country. Supported by the government of neighboring Croatia, they call for a third Croatian entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite their inability to document any systematic discrimination against ethnic Croats in the current set-up. Because of population distribution, a Croatian entity would be a "Swiss cheese," non-contiguous patchwork, adding to the dysfunction of an already cumbersome political structure.

A basic problem documented in many polls is that although the majority Bosniak Muslims, a few numerically small ethnic groups, and a large number of people who refuse to self-label ethnically or religiously all desire a multi-ethnic country, most Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats do not.

Forging universal attachment to a multi-ethnic Bosnian state will not be easy, but the stakes for the West are high. Any attempt at division of Bosnia and Herzegovina would restart civil war and radicalize the heretofore secular Muslim community, raising the specter of an Islamist country in the heart of Europe. In addition, Moscow, increasingly involved in the Western Balkans, would love to make a secessionist Republika Srpska a Russian satellite. If Belgrade were persuaded to annex the splinter state, it would doom Serbia's prospects for EU accession, the cornerstone of Brussels' Balkan policy. Finally, radicals in Kosovo and Macedonia would agitate for a Greater Albania, further destabilizing the region.

The international community, led by the U.S., which retains street credibility in the Federation, and the EU, membership in which is still the long-term goal of a sizable portion of the population, can help to foster reform and forestall these doomsday scenarios.

First, the U.S., EU, and international financial institutions should condition future assistance on Bosnia's immediate fulfillment of a 2009 "Sejdić-Finci" ruling of the European Court of Human Rights against the most blatantly discriminatory feature of the election system.

Second, with international pressure and guidance, a comprehensive reform of the electoral system, beginning with the Federation, must be undertaken to create meaningful accountability of politicians to the citizenry.

Third, the International High Representative should invoke his so-called "Bonn Powers" to indict officials suspected of corruption and dismiss others who abuse their offices.

Fourth, Bosnia must forthwith settle the nagging issue of the ownership of defense property. Once that is accomplished, NATO should give Bosnia a Membership Action Plan, the crucial step toward joining the alliance.

These measures would require modest expenditures and effort, but not substantially detract from more pressing and costly operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and the Far East. Investment in building a successful, multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina is urgently needed and well within our capacity.

Michael Haltzel is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. From 1995 to 2004 he was European foreign policy advisor to Vice President (then-Senator) Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

 

Mladic Witness: Serb-Run Hospital Helped Bosniaks (BIRN, 31 October 2014)

A doctor testified in Ratko Mladic’s defence at the Hague Tribunal that the hospital in the Serb-run town of Foca did not turn away Bosniaks who needed treatment during wartime.

Justice Report

Veljko Maric, the former director of the hospital in Foca, told Mladic’s war crimes trial in The Hague that it treated everyone throughout the war, regardless of their ethnicity.

“From April to December 1992, the hospital treated around 1,900 patients, around 300 of whom were Muslims,” said Maric.

He added that in April 1992, he personally operated on 48 patients, 37 Muslims and 11 Serbs.

Former Bosnian Serb military chief Mladic is on trial for the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats from municipalities under Serb control during the war, one of which is Foca. He is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

The witness told the UN-backed court that the hospital in Foca provided temporary accommodation for a number of Bosniak children who were not sick.

The prosecution presented evidence that the parents and other relatives of those children had been killed in Foca.

The witness responded that he could not say anything about the reasons for housing the children at the hospital.

“I am a surgeon. I was in the operating room. All those who asked for help were admitted,” he said.

“The hospital performed an additional humane role, which was not its obligation,” he added.

The trial continues on Monday.