PM Mirko Cvetković says he expects a detailed investigation to follow the adoption of the PACE resolution on the allegations of organ trafficking in Kosovo. Cvetković told Tanjug that the resolution supports the Serbian government view that war crimes were committed by all sides during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, but added that Belgrade did not wish to turn the issue into a political matter.
Posts Tagged ‘Yugoslavia’
“Regional cooperation one of our prioritiesâ€
January 23rd, 2011 |
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Assistant Foreign Minister Zdravko Ponoš has said that regional cooperation is one of the government priorities, besides EU integration and Kosovo.
“It is a general impression that the relations between the countries of the former Yugoslavia are at their highest point since the country’s breakup, he told daily Press.
Raspberries, tennis, and weapons
January 10th, 2011 |
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Weapons could soon become the third most recognized Serbian export – right behind “tennis and raspberries”, writes a London magazine. The Economist article mentions that the former Yugoslavia was a “big arms exporter”, particularly to third world countries.
Former Czechoslovak dissident, FM dies
January 9th, 2011 |
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Former Czechoslovak dissident, Foreign Minister and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in former Yugoslavia Jiri Dienstbier died in Prague.
His wife Jirina told Czech new agency ÄŒTK that he died at the hospital after a long illness at the age of 73.
Council of Europe: Witnesses in Kosovo risk their lives
January 5th, 2011 |
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A Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) rapporteur has submitted his report on witness protection in war crimes trials for former Yugoslavia.
The document should be adopted by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on January 26.
Hague Tribunal to shut doors by 2015
December 23rd, 2010 |
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The UN has founded a new body which should finish the remaining tasks of the International Crime Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The move comes in order to finalize the work of the two courts by the end of 2014.
“Communist crimes not equal to Holocaust”
December 15th, 2010 |
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Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Bishop Irinej says he is against any equating of the German Nazi crimes with those committed by communists in former Yugoslavia. “Without justifying any execution without a trial, we cannot put an equation sign between that kind of terror and the Holocaust,” the SPC dignitary told the Holocaust Seminar at the Assembly of Vojvodina in Novi Sad.
ProsineÄki new Red Star FC coach
December 10th, 2010 |
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Former Red Star, Yugoslavia, and Croatia footballer Robert ProsineÄki is the new coach of the Belgrade-based club. The management board of the Serbian Red Star football club decided that ProsineÄki should replace Aleksandar Kristić as the new head of the team’s professional staff.
Thousands of leaked cables from ex-Yugoslavia
November 29th, 2010 |
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Among the 250,000 documents which WikiLeaks started publishing on Sunday are several thousand documents concerning the former Yugoslavia.
The leaked U.S. embassy cables addressed to the State Department from around the world covering several decades have been first forwarded by the whistle-blower website to Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian and Le Monde.
“Serbia’s army strongest in regionâ€
November 28th, 2010 |
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Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Å utanovac has said that the Serbian Army (VS) is the strongest in the region of the former Yugoslavia.
He added that the VS was also the second largest in the Balkans and that there is no military force in the region that could easily defeat Serbia.
International justice: In the dock, but for what?
November 25th, 2010 |
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Enthusiasm is flagging for spectacular trials to punish war crimes and human-rights abuses
IF BEING busy is the test, then international justice is in rude health. This week saw a landmark in the short, sputtering history of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution based in The Hague that is supposed to be the ultimate resort against infamies which might otherwise go unpunished. On November 22nd, after many procedural twists, the trial began in earnest of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a rich Congolese warlord and the most senior political leader to be detained by the ICC so far. He is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity—not in Congo, but in the neighbouring Central African Republic, where he intervened on the president’s side during a coup attempt. The ICC is also about to name six prominent Kenyans as alleged instigators of the violence that followed the 2007 elections.
Elsewhere in the Dutch city, the tribunal on ex-Yugoslavia will soon have further questions for Radovan Karadzic, political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, about the massacre near Srebrenica in 1995 (see table). Two other special-purpose courts in The Hague will also be busy. One deals with Sierra Leone and is trying Liberia’s former president, Charles Taylor. Another is struggling, despite opposition from the armed Shia opposition in Lebanon, to investigate the bomb attack that killed Rafik Hariri, then prime minister, in Beirut in 2005. Most important of all, the United Nations Security Council must decide what to do about Sudan, where president Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the ICC. …
Business in the Balkans: Coming together
November 25th, 2010 |
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Business is gradually reuniting the former Yugoslav market
IT DID not get much attention outside the region, but the €243m ($326m) takeover of Slovenia’s Droga Kolinska by Croatia’s Atlantic Grupa, completed on November 23rd, was the biggest corporate deal the Balkans has seen for years. Droga Kolinska’s food brands—from Argeta pates to Soko Stark chocolates and crisps—were attractive to Atlantic because, like its own brands—from Cedevita health drinks to Plidenta toothpaste—they are names that consumers across the former Yugoslavia will remember from their childhoods. Many of the brands being bought come from Serbia, the most populous ex-Yugoslav country.
Croatian commentators have been the first to contest suggestions that a “Yugosphere” is re-emerging, as trade, cultural and personal links grow between Yugoslavia’s seven successor states. However, Croatian companies, Atlantic especially, have been the most enthusiastic in forming such links. Emil Tedeschi, Atlantic’s chief executive, says that with the takeover of Droga Kolinska his firm’s sales in Croatia will fall to just 33% of the total, with 48% coming from the rest of the former Yugoslavia and the remainder from elsewhere. On their own, the seven countries are too small for such an ambitious company; together, with a combined population of some 22m, most of whom share a language and history (albeit a troubled one), they make an attractive market. …
Macedonians “miss Yugoslavia”, poll shows
November 25th, 2010 |
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More than a half of Macedonian citizens still miss Yugoslavia, a recent study of the Center for Research and Policy Making in Skopje showed.
The poll affirmed that around 65 percent of the Macedonian population feels “nostalgic” about the former country, because they “lived better, were economically more secure and felt more free”.
Ex-Croat president receiving Serbian pension
November 24th, 2010 |
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Stjepan Mesić has said that he has been receiving pension checks every month from Serbia. Mesić, who stepped down as Croatia’s president earlier this year, explained that he was getting EUR 39 per month for holding the office of the last president of the presidency of the former Yugoslavia (SFRJ).
International Day Against Fascism marked
November 10th, 2010 |
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Serbia should be proud of its anti-Fascist past because it had the courage to take the right side during the 1930’s and 1940’s, Deputy PM Božidar Äelić said.
He pointed out that “Yugoslavia” sided with the Soviet Union and the United States, and together with them fought against “this plague of our civilizationâ€.
Serbia’s EU bid depends on Hague cooperation
November 9th, 2010 |
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European Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele says the EC concluded that Serbia has initiated important steps towards regional reconciliation. Cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) remains the main pre-condition for Serbia’s progress towards accession to the European Union, he said.
Ex-Slovenian president “can’t save Bosnia”
November 8th, 2010 |
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Milorad Dodik says he is not in favor of ex-Slovenian President Milan KuÄan becoming the Slovenian government’s special representative in Bosnia.
Dodik, who was recently elected president of the Serb entity in Bosnia, RS, says he does not see how KuÄan, who in the early 1990s worked with Serbian and Croatian leaders Slobodan MiloÅ¡ević and Franjo TuÄ‘man to destroy Yugoslavia (SFRJ), could now help Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“Progress in Belgrade-PriÅ¡tina relations”
November 6th, 2010 |
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The European Commission (EC), in its annual report on the progress made by EU hopefuls, commended Serbia on improving relations with Priština.
But it also called on the country to invest greater efforts in the search for remaining International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) fugitives.