LOCAL PRESS

 

Vucic: Serbia needs donors for reconstruction (Radio Serbia, by Biljana Blanusa)

“Serbia has been struck by the biggest natural catastrophe ever recorded in this part of Europe and damage from the floods is huge, so the country needs international aid,” said Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic at a coordination meeting of international donors. The meeting was attended by the representatives of 27 countries of Europe, Asia, North America and international financial institutions. The amount of the damage in Serbia cannot be fully assessed at the moment, but it certainly exceeds 0.64% of the GDP, which is the prerequisite for help from the EU funds and it has been estimated at more than 174.5 million Euros, which is the main criteria for the use of funds from the EU Solidarity Fund, said Vucic. More than 140 collective centers have been opened in Serbia for the purpose of giving shelter to people evacuated from the flooded regions, 31,879 citizens having left their homes. 1,763 facilities have been torn down and 2,260 flooded, and that only in the areas to which authorities have had access. The numbers do not include the town of Obrenovac, which has been struck most by this catastrophe. Thirty-nine municipalities, with a population of 1,643,832 have been threatened. Infrastructure facilities as well have sustained damage. Thirty bridges have been torn down and 50 damaged on arteries and regional roads, while some 200 bridges have been torn down or damaged on municipal and local roads. The damage on Corridor 10, due to a landslide near Dimitrovgrad, has been estimated at more than 10 million Euros. A 10-km long section of a railway line in Tamnava has been destroyed and a kilometer of the Belgrade-Bar railway has been damaged at many places, so the overhaul of that railway line will take a lot of time. Fifty-two public facilities have been damaged, above all primary schools, and some 300 business facilities have suffered damage.

The most damage has been sustained in the electric power and agricultural centers. For instance, the Tamnava field contains water as two Vlasina lakes, said the PM. The problem is that the coal is provided from that location to the Nikola Tesla power plant and the coal mine can be overhauled only when the water withdraws. Due to such a situation, Serbia sets aside between 500,000 Euros and one million euros for electric power import. Partial production of coal, of 10,000 tons, has begun in Kolubara, but full production recovery will take months. That is why Serbia is facing immense losses, estimated at hundreds of million euros. Some 80,000 hectares of agricultural land have been flooded, which is to decrease crops and the foreign currency inflow.

Vucic thanked the countries that have sent aid and said that 13 countries have sent rescue teams and equipment. Humanitarian aid has been sent by the USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Slovenia, Montenegro and many other countries, as well as the UN. The EU has donated decontamination equipment, aggregates and food. The Prime Minister stressed that most aid would be required for the reconstruction of the country and asked international community representatives to give support in order to allot funds for those purposes.

The Head of the EU delegation to Serbia Michael Davenport said he was impressed with the way the Serbian government and public reacted in this very difficult situation. 19 EU member-states took part in rescue operations and the supply of first aid and support in the removal of consequences will be supported as well, he stressed, in three fields: assessment of need for humanitarian aid, establishment of the ways of the reconstruction of threatened areas and putting funds from the solidarity and IPA funds at Serbia’s disposal. For the most urgent needs, such as the reconstruction of houses, 30 million Euros will be provided immediately. The third form is cooperation with the EIB and the EBRD and the provision of favorable loans for the overhaul and reconstruction of the struck areas.

 

CIK rejects Kostic’s candidacy (Novosti)

Member of the Kosovo Central Election Commission (CIK) Nenad Rikalo has stated that CIK had decided, by a majority of votes, to reject the candidacy of Vladeta Kostic from the “Serb list” for the candidacy of the Kosovo MP. Rikalo says that Kostic had a deadline until yesterday to submit his resignation to the post of the Serbian MP, but that he didn’t. The “Serb list” proposed Gracanica Mayor Branimir Stojanovic to replace him. Kostic is a member of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and the leader of the Serbian Civic Initiative. Nineteen political parties, seven civic initiatives, four coalitions and one independent candidate have registered for the parliamentary elections in Kosovo on 8 June.

 

EULEX requests arrest warrant for three members of Drenica Group (Tanjug)

EULEX Special Prosecutor Jonathan Ratel requested from a judge of the Basic Court in Kosovska Mitrovica to issue an arrest warrant for the three fugitive defendants who had been members of the Drenica Group, a part of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Sami Ljustaku, Sahid Jasari i Ismet Hadza escaped from the hospital in Pristina several days ago, where they were receiving treatments, and did not appear at the first hearing of the main trial that began in the Basic Court in northern Mitrovica on Thursday. Former KLA chief commander Sulejman Seljimi and three members of this former paramilitary unit of Albanians in Kosovo - Avni Zabelji, Jahir Demaku and Sabit Geci were in the dock. Defense attorneys of the three fugitives-Ljustaku, Jasari and Hadza claim that they are not on the run, but rather still in Pristina and that police did not manage to bring them for today’s hearing for reasons of security. Members of the KLA Drenica Group are accused of war crimes against the civilian population, including torture, maltreatment and killing in the KLA camp in the village of Likovac in 1998.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Rasmussen: NATO ready to help B&H (Fena)

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting with the B&H Presidency that NATO and its allies are ready to help B&H, which was severely hit by flooding. Rasmussen expressed his condolences to the families of those killed in this natural disaster and said that NATO has already received a request for helicopters, boats, drinking water, funds...
He said that in coordination with the EU, NATO is trying to help as the stability and future of B&H are very important. The Chairman of the B&H Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic said that he had a good meeting with Rasmussen and his team, and that effort to prevent epidemics and contamination of ground waters will be the priority in the coming days, which is why he requested aid in the form of mobile incinerators for animals’ carcasses. “The great problem is mines which flood waters displaced,” Izetbegovic told reporters in Sarajevo.

 

Batteli appeals for further aid to flooded-affected people (Tanjug)

The special representative of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on South-East Europe Roberto Battelli extended his condolences to the families of the flood victims in the Balkans and called on the international community to continue sending aid to the flood-hit citizens. He said that the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly fully supports relief efforts and urged the international community to continue sending food, water and other necessities. Once the water retreats, the flood-affected citizens will need assistance, Battelli said in the release delivered to Tanjug.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Serbia Gathers Donors for Post-Flood Aid as Fiscal Gap Swells (Bloomberg, by Gordana Filipovic, 22 May 2014)
Serbia is holding a meeting with potential global donors seeking aid to recover from devastating floods as its public finances are deteriorating.
The damage caused by the worst flooding in Serbia’s history amounts to “hundreds of millions of euros” as 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles) of roads have been damaged, Transportation Minister Zorana Mihajlovic said in an interview with private TV broadcaster Pink. The government is still assessing the damage to the energy industry, crops and buildings.
The World Bank, the EBRD, the European Investment Bank and other multilateral lenders are meeting in Belgrade today to coordinate aid to the Balkan country, which mainly relies on exports of cars, grains and chemicals for growth. Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s three-week old cabinet expects “substantial” assistance from the European Union and has 10 weeks to submit damage assessments, Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said after meetings in Brussels yesterday.
“We will have to cover most of the cost” and the donor assistance will probably cover “20 percent to 25 percent of the damage,” Vucic said in an interview with B92 news portal.
The government will have to revise policy priorities for this year, Vucic said on May 20 after meeting Kristalina Georgieva, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid. Before the floods, he was planning to narrow Europe’s highest budget gap of more than 7 percent of economic output through public spending cuts, incentives for investors and a clampdown on the grey economy, as a condition to win a new loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Deficit, Flood
Serbia’s budget deficit widened to 92 billion dinars ($1.1 billion) in the four months through April, a 21 percent increase from a year earlier and 50 percent of the full-year target, according to the Finance Ministry. The central bank forecast economic growth of 1 percent for this year.
Serbia declared a state of emergency on May 15 after the worst rainfall since records began to be kept 127 years ago triggered floods, cutting off power and water supplies to thousands of households, leaving 27 dead in the largest former Yugoslav republic, 17 in neighboring Bosnia and two in Croatia.
“The economic damage from the flooding may be substantial,” the EBRD said on May 20, citing a 40 percent drop in power generation in Serbia alone.

Worries Turn to Disease as Waters Recede in Balkans (The New York Times, by Rick Lymanmay, 21 May 2014)
Credit By Quynhanh Do on Publish Date May 21, 2014
OBRENOVAC, Serbia — For five days, as rain pelted the Balkans and the waters rose, Jovanka Sreckovic, 85, waited in bed in her tiny house, barely a hut, beside the Sava River. Ms. Sreckovic, unable to walk, had no food, no water, no medicine and no electricity, and felt herself sinking into sickness with nothing but a children’s book about Jesus to pass the time.
And then, on Saturday, a squad of frantic police officers from neighboring Montenegro bashed in her front door and snatched her away so fast that she had no time to grab a pair of shoes. She even had to leave her precious cat, Rosa, behind.
“I had not been able to get out of my bed, even to look outside,” said Ms. Sreckovic, a retired schoolteacher. “So I was shocked to see that the water had come to within a few yards of my front door. I would have drowned in less than an hour.”
The worst of the waters have receded, for the moment, even here in the Serbian town hit hardest by the record-smashing floods. But with temperatures in the mid-80s and rising, concerns are now shifting to an almost inevitable outbreak of disease in the coming weeks.
“We are preparing ourselves for the worst,” Zlatibor Loncar, the Serbian minister of health, said in an interview on Wednesday. “It could be pretty bad.”
Contaminated water has covered homes, towns and fields, turning much of Serbia’s most fertile agricultural region into a poisonous stew of toxic chemicals, rotting carcasses and disease-carrying insects. So far, there have been no epidemic outbreaks, the health minister said, but that will almost certainly change — intestinal ailments, respiratory infections, skin diseases, hepatitis, perhaps worse.
“That is what is going to happen,” he said. “We can’t predict what kind of disease, but if people return to their homes too soon, as many will, before the contaminated areas can be cleaned, it will naturally come to that.”
Ms. Sreckovic was one of the last to be evacuated from her village, in a final military truckload of the elderly. By Wednesday, she was resting comfortably on a mattress in the Kombank Arena, Belgrade’s gleaming sports and concert facility, which has been transformed into an evacuation center. Young doctors and nurses, all wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves — just a precaution, they said — were walking through the grid of sleeping figures on their battered mattresses, surrounded by sad piles of soiled possessions.
Ms. Sreckovic clung to her walking stick, a plate of oranges and that same children’s book, “Where the Lord Lives.” But at least she is getting her medicine again.
“I am so worried about Rosa,” she said, melting into tears. “I don’t know what happened to her. She is my only friend. Maybe she is in the attic?”
Efforts this week to safeguard the massive Nikola Tesla power plant outside Obrenovac, which supplies nearly half of the country’s electricity, appear to have been successful. But there are worries that a second wave of flooding will hit the region by Friday, perhaps inundating some of the towns and villages that are just now beginning to dry out.
The second wave, which is not expected to be as huge as the first — the largest since records began to be kept 120 years ago — could still be devastating. It will be caused by a mass of water moving down the Danube from Germany and Austria, which had heavy rainfall from the same system that socked the Balkans.
The powerful Danube is expected to handle the flow with ease. But its passage is likely to cause the Sava and other tributaries to back up yet again.
That is why Gen. Ljubisa Dikovic, the Serbian military chief of staff, has spent the last five days taking personal command of efforts to reinforce a 15-mile sandbag wall outside Sabac, which, with 120,000 residents, is the largest city in the region. Sabac is also home to a huge Elixir Zorka chemical plant built right on the river, which, if overrun, could spill agricultural minerals and toxic fertilizers into the city.
A drive through the chemical plant, where a skeleton crew struggled to pump water back into the river, showed that most of the facility was flooded, but that its most dangerous chemicals were still safe in tanks built a few yards above ground level.
General Dikovic swatted at swarms of mosquitoes as he stood atop the levee and watched more than 2,000 workers — soldiers, foreign relief workers and volunteers from nearby towns — pile a fresh layer of sandbags to reinforce those that have grown waterlogged and useless. Already, more than a million sandbags have been placed on this single two-mile stretch of the wall. Still, water was seeping beneath the levee and spreading into nearby corn and wheat fields.
“The dripping from the sponge has to be stopped,” the general declared. “After we have had this flooding already, to have Sabac flooded would be a catastrophe.”
Here in Obrenovac, the main park is still underwater, as are the surrounding houses and apartment blocks. The town’s soccer stadium, too. Only the tops of flamingo-necked streetlights peek above the water line.
Soldiers evacuated people on Saturday in Obrenovac, the Serbian town hit hardest by the record-breaking floods. Credit Marko Djurica/Reuters
“I am going to roast a lamb for you,” Dusan Stojiljkovic, 64, yelled to soldiers in a boat passing beneath a bridge that, a few days ago, had been completely underwater. The soldiers had saved “Wild Dule,” as he is known in town, and two companions — “We are the Wild Team,” he said proudly — when their boat overturned after several frantic hours of evacuating neighbors.
Stojan Jelisavcic, 32, the youngest of the trio and a water polo coach, said he was plucked by soldiers from the side of that very bridge while clinging for dear life, the raging waters trying to suck him under. And he knows fast water. Mr. Jelisavcic is a member of a Serbian rafting team sent to international competitions featuring the highest-rated rapids in the world, known as 5-plus.
“Even so, this was something I had never experienced,” he said. “I never expected to encounter greater than 5-plus rapids in my own town, on my own street.”
Obrenovac is an eerie ghost town now, many of its streets finally drying out, but hundreds of houses still submerged and probably never to be inhabited again.
Still, Serbia’s interior minister, Nebojsa Stefanovic, on the job just three weeks, said he was proud of the local teams’ work in pumping water, evacuating citizens and building barricades. “We have managed to stop three rivers in their tracks,” he said.
Now, though, the hard work begins. At least 2,100 miles of roads have been damaged, the minister said, plus untold numbers of homes, bridges, rail lines, schools, hospitals. It will take years, and billions of dollars, to rebuild.
Ivica Dobrojevic, an architect in Sabac who was among the thousands to heed the call to help, rested beside a stack of sandbags beside the Sava. Despite the scope of the disaster, he found himself encouraged.
“I had almost given up for the future of our country, because everyone was in apathy, concerned only about themselves,” said Mr. Dobrojevic, 42. “But now, no one is asking who you are or where you come from, not even the young people. There is unity now. Something has woken everybody up.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Worries Turn to Disease as Waters Recede in Balkans.

Record Bosnian floods raises danger of moving mines (euronews, 20 May 2014)
The Bosnian war ended in 1995, but ever since the conflict has claimed lives. More than 600 people have died since…from unexploded landmines.
Now with the worst flooding in over 120 years Serbia and Bosnia are faced with a new danger – the mines have crept out of their designated areas, and nowhere is safe again in poor areas which need agriculture and forestry to survive.
“We’ve seen yesterday in one news report a man who threw into the river Bosnia two mines that the water had moved to his front yard. That is the worst thing one can do,” said Deminer Fikret Smais.
Mines have been washed to the surface or entire minefields have disappeared in landslides. Nothing is marked any more.
“Many depend on agriculture and now literally all the fields have been flooded and all the crops are destroyed. In my town clearing the fields will be the biggest problem,” says the mayor of Visoko, Amra Babic.
It is estimated some 120,000 landmines remain buried around Bosnia alone, with an estimated cost of removal if large-scale work could immediately begin, at some 300 million euros.

Bosnia authorities under fire over flood response (BIRN, by Elvira Jukic, 21 May 2014)
While ordinary Bosnians have shown solidarity with flood victims, the country’s entity governments are coming under fire for failing to help people on time.
As hundreds of tons of relief collected in Bosnia and elsewhere reaches victims of the severe floods in Bosnia, the authorities have been criticized for failing to react on time.
In Bosnia’s Federation entity, many people said they had still not obtained either food or other aid. A report from the town of Maglaj, for example, showed a man seeking a package of donated food but being turned away.
Other reports said robberies had increased in the emergency and that traders had taken advantage of the situation. Some traders have reportedly upped prices massively or re-sold donated goods.
The governments of both of Bosnia's entities, the Federation and Republika Srpska, both ordered prices to be frozen at the level of May 14, which is the date when the crisis started. They have also said thieves and profiteers will be dealt with harshly.
The two governments have also organized civil protection forces that have worked hard to address the crisis.
“It is obvious there is the greatest possible solidarity of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Federation lawmaker Mirza Ustamujic said. “It is touching to see citizens of Republika Srpska thanking the citizens of the Federation for their help,” he added.
Initiatives started on Tuesday to organize a donor conference for Bosnia while the country's Presidency urged the European Union to provide financial assistance for solving the crisis stemming from the floods.
The Presidency also told the Council of Ministers, the state-level government, to coordinate the process of gathering relief material, seek international help and put all political and ethnic differences aside.
“Personally it seems to me that the spirit of the former Yugoslavia woke up because from Slovenia to Macedonia we have received help daily,” the Serbian member of the country’s Presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, said.
However, the fact that most of the food and other donations reaching victims has come from ordinary people, not from government reserves, which only opened five days into the catastrophe, has led to criticism.
The Federation entity’s civil protection chief, Jerko Ivankovic Lijanovic, said there was no need to use up government reserves as so much food was coming from people’s donations.
In Republika Srpska, President Milorad Dodik has also also criticized, in his case for leaving for Belgrade at the height of the floods to meet Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic - who was naturally focusing on the relief effort in Serbia. Dodik was accused of prioritizing the needs of flood victims in Serbia over the flooded victims in Bijeljina or Doboj in Bosnia.

Drowning in the Balkans (counterpunch.org, by Binoy Kampmark, 22 May 2014)
The Politics of the Flood
Behind every calamity of nature lies a political response. Human communities eventually need to find the cause, the hand that made things worse, what might have been done better. The Bosnian and Serbian floods have made the opponents of the government hungry. The animal is wounded, and as the Balkans drowns, a dividend is being reaped. Whether the Prime Minister accompanies a rescue effort or not, there are criticisms; when he is not there, the opposition complain that he is invisible and indifferent.
In Serbia and Bosnia, crops have been destroyed by broken banks and failed barriers. Power infrastructure is being threatened. Mining has been disrupted, and the functioning of two hydro-power plants of the Serbian power utility company EPS halted. Unexploded land mines from the civil war of 1992-5 are also being disturbed. Sports stadia are being filled; tents and shelters erected. If governments can fold because of the price of foodstuffs, there is every reason to assume the same in the event of environmental calamity. Fragile states are often at the mercy, not merely of their governors, but the elements.
Then there is the sense of battle over how humanitarian, and effective, an effort can be. Help has been forthcoming from neighbours. Macedonia has been providing assistance. Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia have also added their presence, along with such EU states as Germany, Austria and Britain. Donations are streaming in, as are foot stuffs and water.
But it is Russian rescue efforts which have proven to be formidable, credited with saving thousands of lives. In one operation at Obrenovac, site of Serbia’s biggest power plant, 393 people, including 79 children were rescued. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM) dispatched members of the Tsentropas airmobile team with a degree of immediacy last week, after a request from Belgrade for help was received.
There was even the suggestion that Russians did more than the Serb forces combined, giving a sense of woe as to where Serbia’s own prowess in civil protection had gone. The skills of the 76 or so divers with updated “equipment and techniques” on the part of the Russian rescue team, equipped with K-32 helicopters and Illyushin IL-76 aircraft, were praised.
In this effort, a political note has emerged. The Russians have been effective and enthusiastic, salutary to a long fraternal association with the Serbian state. The European Union has been half-hearted, even cold, asserting its bullying posture over admitting Serbia to the club, but indifferent to its times of need. In the words of Svetlana Maksovic, writing for the Serbian monthly Geopolitika, “many Serbian people are upset by the reaction, or lack of reaction thereof, of the European Union, especially after EU Foreign Policy Head Catherine Ashton did nothing more than send her condolences” (Voice of Russia, May 17).
As the Voice of Russia noted, almost with a degree of smug satisfaction, “The Russian Federation has been the first country to respond during the dire time of need of the Serbian people with many Serbians dismayed by the almost complete lack of response from the European Union and other countries.” Milica Djurdjevic, head of public relations with the patriotic organisation Srpski sabor Zavetnici, was adamant in praise about how Serbia “immediately received material help from our historical friends and allies from the Russian Federation.” Such a sentiment suggests that EU officials would be wise to front up to the way natural disasters figure in political narratives. Russia, as it has done in its interventions in Europe, is gaining plaudits.
The questions are gathering in number. Did the warning to evacuate come too late? In a sense, the lethargic, even complacent response to the floods could not be faulted – its scale took most by surprise. Many simply did not want to believe it. Rescuers who came up to some residents, urging them to leave, were rebuffed. According to Sinisa Mali, describing the early stage of the floods, “A man was refused to leave his home as suggested by rescuers and drowned overnight in Umcari.” Some residents of Obrenovac have shown similar stubbornness in terms of being evacuated, so much so that the Minister for Labor, Employment, Social Affairs and Veterans, Aleksander Vulin, has become desperate. Everything, he assures, is there for the evacuees. Don’t tempt fate.
In all of this, the meteorologists have become the new apostles of gloom, though on this occasion, their warnings of total submerging were treated as minor murmurings. The subtext in the response was that it could surely not happen. Stay in the homes and weather the storm.
The suggestion coming from weather watchers was not merely that the floods were the worst in 120 years, but in centuries. This is not the freak show of a malevolent divinity, the ‘act of God’ insurance companies like citing. This may well be standard fare, a recurring feature of a malevolent, angry climate that makes rescue and response efforts miniature in scale. In such cases, it is not merely the dams that burst, put the political will to maintain stability.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

Dobrica Cosic, First Friend Then Foe of Serbia’s Milosevic, Dies at 92 (The New York Times, by William Yardleymay, 21 May 2014)
Dobrica Cosic, a novelist and outspoken Serbian nationalist who served briefly as president of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s when its breakup in the midst of sectarian war was already underway, died on Sunday in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. He was 92.
His family confirmed his death to news outlets in Belgrade.
Mr. Cosic was a novelist before he was a politician and a Communist before he was a nationalist. Aligned early in his career with Josip Broz Tito, the president of Yugoslavia when it was formed from six distinct regions after World War II, he spoke of Communism’s capacity to knit together the country’s diverse ethnic and cultural groups.
But by the 1960s Mr. Cosic (whose full name is pronounced DOE-bree-tsah CHO-sitch) began questioning how the government and other groups in the region were treating Serbs, the largest ethnic group in the republic but one that, unlike others, had no stand-alone state.
“A Time of Death,” his epic series of novels about how the tragedies Serbia suffered during World War I ultimately made the Serbian people stronger, was among several of his novels and other writings that have been credited with inspiring a stronger sense of Serbian nationalism. But in doing so he was also accused of stirring resentment that some nationalists expressed with violence.
Some of Mr. Cosic’s theories about Serbian nationalism and democracy in Yugoslavia were promoted by Slobodan Milosevic, the Communist leader of Serbia, beginning in 1989. Mr. Milosevic’s embrace of Serbian nationalism eventually helped set off almost a decade of Balkan warfare, costing an estimated 200,000 lives and resulting in his trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. (He died in his cell during the trial in 2006.)
For a time, Mr. Cosic expressed support for Mr. Milosevic, but he also questioned Mr. Milosevic’s commitment to Mr. Cosic’s stated goal of creating a democratic region.
“My main criticism of Milosevic is his slowness to support political reform,” Mr. Cosic told The New York Times in 1990.
A self-described moderate with no party affiliation, Mr. Cosic was elected president of Yugoslavia by its Federal Assembly in June 1992. It was unclear from the beginning how powerful he would be and what his plans were. The Yugoslav federation had dwindled to just two republics, Montenegro and the recently formed Republic of Serbia. He was 70 at the time, and Mr. Milosevic, the president of Serbia, was widely understood to control what remained of the federation.
Mr. Cosic appeared to seek elusive middle ground, saying in his acceptance speech that he wanted “peace and cooperation with all neighbors, the United States and the whole world community,” but also that he supported Serbs fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia, actions opposed internationally.
Asked in a televised interview whether his rise meant the end of Mr. Milosevic’s dominance, he replied, “This is not in my competence to say.”
The following spring, Mr. Cosic and Mr. Milosevic embraced a United Nations plan for peace in the region.
“The conditions of this plan are not ideal, and in fact they are painful,” Mr. Cosic told the Serbian Assembly in May 1993. “The plan is imperfect and unjust. But it gives us a chance to achieve our goals through peace instead of war. The world is against us, and we cannot continue this war to the point of committing suicide. We have no strength for this war. We cannot continue fighting this war.”
But Serbs rejected the deal, and less than a month later, at the beginning of June, Mr. Milosevic orchestrated Mr. Cosic’s ouster.
Dobroslav Cosic was born on Dec. 29, 1921, in the village of Velika Drenova.
Information about survivors was not immediately available.
During World War II, he joined the Communist resistance to German occupation. After the war, as a government official, he was in charge of propaganda. He developed close ties with President Tito and for two decades was an ardent promoter of Yugoslav unity.
But in 1968, Tito removed him from the Communist Party Central Committee for speaking out against the treatment of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, a province where Albanians made up the vast majority.
“I have to thank Tito for banning me,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “It gave me time to write.”
In a complicated region, Mr. Cosic’s role was complicated, too. In 2000, when a student group called Otpor formed to protest Mr. Milosevic’s policies, Mr. Cosic, nearly 80, decided to join. Political commentators took note of his continued effort to distance himself from Mr. Milosevic, even as he was accused of enabling his brutal rule.
A drawing by a prominent cartoonist, Corax, showed Mr. Cosic scrubbing himself clean in a bathtub with a hand curled into a fist, the Otpor symbol of resistance. Unlike the fist in the real Otpor symbol, however, Mr. Cosic’s had been reduced to the bones of a skeleton.

Jihadist Threat to Europe Worries Macedonia (BIRN, by Besar Likmeta, 22 May 2014)
Macedonian Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska told Balkan Insight that jihadists recruited in Europe to fight with al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria threaten the whole continent's security.
Interior Minister Jankulovska says hard-line Islamists returning to Europe after fighting in Syria pose a danger to the whole continent.
“Four Macedonian citizens already died in Syria, which is a strong indicator that this problem is expanding,” Jankulovska said.
“This is not a problem isolated in a single country but a problem threatening all of Europe,” she added.
The minister noted that two of the four citizens from Macedonia who died fighting in Syria's civil war were recruited in Western Europe.
The International Center for the Study of Radicalization, ISRA, a think tank based in King's College, London, believes some 130 fighters from Europe, mostly ethnic Albanians, have joined groups linked to al-Qaeda in Syria, including Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS.
Jankulovska said the Macedonian government did not have a clear view of the exact number of its citizens fighting in Syria, but added that new amendments to the criminal code could serve as a deterrent to others joining them.
“We have introduced a new crime concerning people who are mediating and promoting the idea of going to Syria,” Jankulovska said.
“We believe this send a strong message from the government that we do not support this kind of behaviour and want to anything possible to stop Macedonian citizens from going to Syria,” she concluded.