Republic of Serbia: daily survey

- DAILY SURVEY

No. 01/100 - Belgrade, 3/17/2014 - Prepared by: Marija Vrečer

SERBIA - ELECTIONS

CESID: SNS CLEAR WINNER WITH 48.2 PERCENT, 156 SEATS

BELGRADE, March 17 (Tanjug) - The Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won 48.2 percent of the votes, or 156 seats in the parliament, at the early election on Sunday, while the coalition between the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), Party of United Pensioners of Serbia (PUPS) and United Serbia (JS) came in second with 13.6 percent, or 44 seats, according to CeSID’s final projections. The Democratic Party (DS) won 6.3 percent, while the New Democratic Party (NDS) took 5.7, CeSID told a news conference at Tanjug’s Press Centre. The Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) won 4.2 percent, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won 3.4, United Regions of Serbia (URS) 3 and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) 2 percent. According to data from CeSID, three minority parties, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM), Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and Riza Halimi’s Party of Democratic Action (PDD), will also get seats in the parliament. In terms of seats in the parliament, the coalition led by the SNS will get 156, the SPS-PUPS-JS coalition will get 44, the DS will have 20 and the NDS 18. The SVM will have 7 seats, followed by the SDA with 3 and PDD with 2. The SNS also won the local election in Belgrade, taking 42.5 percent of the votes, with the DS in second place with 16.1 percent, according to CeSID. The SPS-PUPS-JS coalition won 11.6 percent of the votes in Belgrade, while the DSS got 6.6 percent. The other parties did not reach the threshold in Belgrade. The SNS should have 62 councillors in the city hall, according to these results, while the DS would get 23 seats, SPS-PUPS-JS 16 and DSS 9. The turnout for the local election in Belgrade was 50.5 percent, according to CeSID’s estimates. CeSID Executive Director Marko Blagojevic stressed that the votes from KiM, around 30,000, had not been processed yet. Those votes, however, will not affect the results significantly and can at best mean one seat more or less to one of the slates, he stated. The occasional irregularities that occurred in the elections on Sunday were not so serious as to undermine the entire vote and could only result in a rerun of the vote at some polling stations, Blagojevic pointed out.

SCHLUMBERGER: POLLS IN KOSOVO IN KEEPING WITH REGULATIONS

PRISTINA, March 17 (Tanjug) - Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo Jean-Claude Schlumberger said that the voting procedure in the early parliamentary elections in Kosovo-Metohija on Sunday was conducted in keeping with regulations and the data of the organisation show 34.42 percent of citizens with the right to vote cast their ballots in the course of the day. Schlumberger expressed satisfaction with the voting procedure and added that the ten OSCE centres and 15 branches in Kosovo opened and closed on time except three polling stations which closed later as voters were waiting in lines to cast their ballots. According to the OSCE data, a total of 34.42 percent of citizens voted on Sunday, Schlumberger said. Upon the closing of the polling stations, the election materials were transported by OSCE vehicles to Raska and Vranje where the ballots were counted, states the OSCE release. The total number of people with the right to vote in the parliamentary elections in Kosovo-Metohija added up to 107,958 and they had the chance to use their right at ten polling centres and 15 branches. The elections in 17 municipalities in Kosovo-Metohija were followed by 400 OSCE representatives.

PUSIC, KOURKOULAS: CONGRATULATIONS TO SERBIA

BRUSSELS, March 17 (Tanjug) - The Foreign Minister of Croatia and Greece Monday sent their congratulations to Serbia for successfully holding its parliamentary elections on Sunday. I congratulate all those who achieved good results, Croatia’s Minister Vesna Pusic told reporters ahead of the beginning of the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on Monday. Greece’s Minister Antonis Kourkoulas said the election results is good news. Everything that contributes to regional stability is good, he said.

CHEPURIN: NEW GOVT TO ACHIEVE WHAT SERBIA NEEDS MOST

BELGRADE, March 17 (Tanjug) - Russian Ambassador in Serbia Alexander Chepurin expressed the expectation that the Serbian government would realise what Serbia needs most, primarily in terms of economic development. Serbia is very close to Russia and we are on a path which calls for fast economic development, fight against corruption, progress, improvement of living standards for citizens and good relations between Serbia and Russia, Chepurin told Tanjug late on Sunday. He expressed the hope that forces and parties which maintain a friendly attitude toward Russia would assume power. What is good for Serbia is good for Russia as well, Chepurin said and added that Russia hopes that the new government would act to the best interests of Serbia, while Russia will try to provide assistance in the areas of mutual interest for both sides so as to preserve friendship.

KIRBY: VOTERS SHOW THEY EXPECT ECONOMIC REFORMS

BELGRADE, March 17 (Tanjug) - U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Michel Kirby has stated that according to the electoral results, the voters have shown that they are expecting economic reforms and creation of new jobs. This was a very interesting election, and I am sure that (Aleksandar) Vucic and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) are extraordinary happy. I am always pleased to see the democratic process play out. Now it will be interesting to see the formation of the new government and how that is put together, Kirby told Tanjug on Sunday evening. Asked about the expectations of the future government, Kirby said that Vucic has noted that there are some difficult economic changes that have to come and that is one thing I think many voters here would expect. I also believe that they are continuing on the path to the EU and so some of the reforms that are necessary to go along including making a functioning economy so that people can get jobs, Ambassador Kirby said, adding that the continuation of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina is also expected. I hope that they will continue on some other things they are doing, such as expanding the peacekeeping operations and giving the Serbian military, that Serbs are proud of, the basis for cooperation internationally, the U.S. Ambassador stated.

WILHELM: ECONOMIC REFORMS ARE MOST IMPORTANT FOR NEXT GOVT

BELGRADE, March 17 (Tanjug) - German Ambassador to Serbia Heinz Wilhelm has said in comment to the Sunday election in Serbia that the results of the vote are more or less similar to the projections and stressed that economic reforms are the most important thing for the next government. The results are not final yet, but the information so far is more or less what was expected based on the surveys before the vote, Wilhelm told Tanjug. Economic reforms are the most important thing for whichever government comes next, he stated. He believes the reforms were also the main reason the early election was called. Wilhelm hopes the next government will adopt all the laws related to the economy as soon as possible, so the Serbian economy could move forward.

MANZO: NEW GOVERNMENT SHOULD CONTINUE WITH REFORMS

BELGRADE, March 17 (Tanjug) - Italian Ambassador in Belgrade Giuseppe Manzo has voiced hope that a new Serbian government will continue working on reforms and further advancement along the EU path with resolve. "I think that the numbers are clear: they clearly speak about the future government and clearly say that, whatever the future government is, they will be numbers in the parliament to continue working with even more determination on the two priorities for Serbia: economic reforms and EU path", Manzo told Tanjug. He voiced hope that the next government "would not waste the work that has already been done", and that it will continue working on the issues that have already been tackled. Ambassador Manzo expressed expectation that the goals, which were set by leaders of almost all parties in the election campaign - the strengthening of the economy and further steps along the EU path, will be fulfilled.

SERBIA

10 YEARS SINCE MASSIVE ANTI-SERB VIOLENCE IN KIM

BELGRADE, March 17 (B92) - Monday marks ten years since ethnic Albanians in Kosovo launched a widespread campaign of violence targeting Serbs in the province. The incidents that took place on March 17 and 18, 2004, known in Serbia as "the March pogrom," and resulted in 4,012 Serbs driven out of their homes. 19 people lost their lives, eight of them Serbs, 11 Albanians were killed in clashes with international forces who tried to contain them and protect Serb lives and property. At least 170 Serbs were injured, along with dozens of members of international missions. Some 800 Serb-owned homes were destroyed, along with 35 religious structures, including 18 monuments of culture. Among them was the Church of Our Lady of Ljevis (Bogorodica Ljeviska) in Prizren - one of the landmark monuments of the medieval Serbia state, which received its final shape during the rule of King Milutin (1282-1321), and served prior to that as the seat of the Serbian Church’s diocese of Prizren. The church has been partially renewed, but the traces of devastation and arson have not been removed. In 2006, it was placed on the UNESCO list of protected monuments. Recently the task of guarding it was taken over from KFOR by the Kosovo police. According to the April 2004 data of the SPC Diocese of Raska and Prizren, the total number of church-owned structures that had been destroyed was nearly 100. International prosecutors and judges in KiM opened seven cases related to the destruction of churches, and sent 67 person to jail, with terms ranging from 21 months to 16 years. The wave of violence against Serbs in KiM came after Albanian language media launched a campaign claiming that local Serbs near Zubin Potok "chased a group of Albanian boys with dogs and drove them into the Ibar River", where one of them drowned. An UNMIK investigation later determined that these were false claims. International police spokesman Neeraj Singh said that "the surviving boys were under strong pressure from Albanian journalists and politicians to accuse Serbs from a neighboring village". The terror launched by Albanian extremists was condemned by the EU, the UN, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which in April 2004 voted to adopt a resolution on these events.

VULIN BANNED FROM ATTENDING MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR SLAIN SERBS

BELGRADE, March 16 (Tanjug) - Serbia’s Minister without portfolio for Kosovo-Metohija Aleksandar Vulin has been banned from attending a memorial service for slain Kosovo Serbs that will be held at the St. Nicholas Church in Pristina to mark the tenth anniversary of the March Pogrom, the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija said on Sunday. "The latest ban shows that Pristina wants to impose a ban on reminding the world of the unpunished atrocities and crimes against the Serbs," the office said in a statement. The tenth anniversary of the pogrom will be commemorated by the Kosovo-Metohija Serbs with or without Minister Vulin, and Serbia will on March 17 remind the world of the crimes committed amid international presence in Kosovo-Metohija, just as it will seek that murderers and those who torched houses finally be brought to justice, the statement said. In the night between March 17 and 18, 2004, ethnic Albanian terrorists razed or torched 439 Serb homes and 35 Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo-Metohija, with 28 people killed and around 4,000 Serbs driven out of the province. The St. Nicholas Church in Pristina, one of the holy sites razed in 2004, was renovated in 2009. A total of 45,000 Serbs lived in Pristina before the arrival of KFOR. All of them moved out of the city after the pogrom. The Office for Kosovo-Metohija urged UNMIK and EULEX to not only condemn the most recent ban but also do everything in their power to stop the policy of violence and bans.

SERBIA – UAE

SERBIA-UAE AGREEMENTS SIGNED

BELGRADE, March 14 (Tanjug) - Serbian Foreign Minister Ivan Mrkic and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan signed on Friday agreements on visa liberalization for individuals holding diplomatic and official passports, air traffic, and constitution of the mixed committee for cooperation. The ministers underlined that the two countries are connected through friendly and partner relations and expressed hope that their cooperation will continue to develop. "Serbia sees the United Arab Emirates as an exceptionally important friend and partner, and we are strongly committed to developing even deeper friendly relations in the future”, Mrkic told a press conference after his meeting with the UAE official. The topics of the meeting included potential new joint projects and cooperation in the fields of agriculture, air traffic, energy, information and communications technology, infrastructure, tourism, said Mrkic. Over the past year, several UAE investments into Serbia have been realized and agreed upon, a number of bilateral agreements have been signed, and Serbia has opened an embassy in Abu Dhabi, he added. Serbian foreign minister expressed gratitude to the UAE for the recent USD 1 billion loan to Serbia, noting that this loan will significantly contribute to the country’s economic and financial stability. Al Nahyan underlined that the UAE is satisfied with its partnership with Serbia and good relations with countries across the region. The Balkans has suffered greatly over the past two decades and it is an obligation of the international community to invest as much as possible in order to strengthen peace in the region, noted al Nahyan. The UAE foreign minister added that his country is particularly interested in cooperation in infrastructure and agriculture.

SERBIAN PRESIDENT MEETS WITH UAE FOREIGN MINISTER

BELGRADE, March 14 (Tanjug) - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said during a meeting he had with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on Friday, that Serbia greatly values its friendship with the UAE, expressing his satisfaction about a decision by the two governments to open diplomatic missions in the two countries. Cooperation between the two countries has been restored in all areas and the framework for implementation of cooperation in the field of economy is being drawn up, said Nikolic. Serbia has numerous advantages over others, such as its geographical position and excellent workforce which, together with the country’s forthcoming EU accession, investors from the United Arab Emirates may find to be favorable for business, Nikolic said, calling for cooperation through direct investment. “We have stabilized Serbia and helped strengthen the political stability of the entire region”, the Serbian president said, adding that an economically strong Serbia is a guarantor of a strong and stable Balkans. Al Nahyan congratulated Nikolic and Serbian leadership for helping stabilize the region in a very fast and efficient manner and for playing a vital part in the process of reconciliation between countries that were in armed conflict less than a decade ago. The UAE foreign minister voiced expectation that Serbia will join the EU very soon, as that would be a guarantee of peace, prosperity and stability in the region. When it comes to investment, there are numerous opportunities for long-term cooperation in the fields of agriculture, industry, aviation, infrastructure and tourism, said Al Nahyan.

SERBIA – CROATIA

SERBS’ DISAPPEARANCE FROM KRAJINA - GOAL OF OPERATION STORM

THE HAGUE, March 14 (Tanjug) - Serbia’s legal team underlined before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday that Operation Storm was the largest, single, ethnic cleansing campaign in living memory, which the Croatian authorities conducted with the genocidal intent to destroy the Krajina Serbs. Counsel for Serbia Wayne Jordash noted that the genocide was planned in the Brioni meeting between the then Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and military commanders on July 31, 1995. During the meeting, Tudjman set as the objective of Operation Storm, which followed on August 4-5, 1995, that the Serbs disappear from the Krajina region. "As the evidence shows, President Tudjman, the leader of Croatia and its ruling party, the HDZ, as well as the Supreme Commander of the Croatian forces at the time, saw genocide as a solution to the problem presented by the Krajina Serbs," Jordash said. Serbia provided the Brioni meeting transcript, which Tudjman himself recorded, as the key evidence of the Croatian authorities’ genocidal intent. Quoting a paragraph from Tudjman’s book "Wastelands of Historical Reality", Jordash noted that Tudjman regarded genocide "as a pragmatic solution to inter-ethnic conflict or political disputes". He noted that the Brioni leaders targeted the Krajina Serbs for extinction, adding that this was the plan that- if successful - would destroy the group or a substantial part of it. During the operation, the widespread and systematic killing, physical and mental harm and the deliberate infliction on the Krajina Serbs of conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction on its own give rise to such an inference, he said. After 200, 000 Serbs were forced to flee due to the indiscriminate shelling of towns in Operation Storm, the operation continued with the attacks on those that remained - mostly the elderly, the disabled and the sick, he said. "Anything Serbian was burnt or destroyed in a crescendo of violence that was as motiveless, as it was destructive. It speaks eloquently, yet terribly, about the intent at the heart of Operation Storm", Jordash underlined, and further illustrated with quotations from reports by international humanitarian organizations. He concluded that there is no dilemma that all these acts represented a comprehensive operation with the intent to destroy the Krajina Serbs. "The Croatian leadership knew that the combination of the crimes would inevitably result in the physical disappearance of the Serbians from Croatia and clearly intended through these acts to physically destroy this group", Serbia’s counsel said. Jordash also presented the evidence that Croatia failed to punish the perpetrators, given that up to this day no one has been convicted for the crimes against the Serbs during and after Operation Storm. William Schabas, a member of the Serbian legal team, pointed to the 2011 census of Croatia which shows that ethnic Serbs living in Croatia accounted for just 32 percent of the total number of ethnic Serbs who had lived in the country twenty years earlier, which illustrates the scale the scale of the transformation that has taken place within that country’s borders. A large proportion of this is a consequence of Operation Storm, he noted. Schabas said that had he lived longer, Croatian president Tudjman would have appeared before the international court on charges of genocide. Referring to the acquittal that the Appeals Chamber delivered to Croatian general Ante Gotovina, the commander in Operation Storm, Schabas noted that the court had not challenged the findings about the widespread crimes against the Serbs from the first-instance ruling that had sentenced Gotovina to 27 years in prison. Schabas said that one of the two judges that had voiced a dissenting opinion concerning the acquittal of Gotovina said that the judgment had nothing to do with justice. "The Brioni meeting transcript provides conclusive evidence of the existence of a policy on the part of the Croatian leadership to eradicate the Serbs living in Krajina - military personnel and civilian population alike", Schabas said. "The communication at Brioni reveals the intent to bring about the disappearance of the Serb population not simply through their removal, but likewise through their physical destruction", he added. Schabas compared the Brioni meeting with Wannsee Conference of February 1942, the meeting during which senior Nazis plotted the destruction of the Jews in Europe using the notorious euphemism of the "final solution". Responding to Croatia’s claim that a legitimate military operation to expel the Serb military forces, and not civilians, was planned at Brioni, Serbia’s representative said that there is no dilemma that Operation Storm was planned by a meeting of criminals, at Brioni, at which criminal acts were planned. At the close of the first round of argument of Serbia, Agent of Serbia Sasa Obradovic said that it had not been Serbia’s choice to come before the ICJ to litigate these issues, but that Croatia had insisted on that. Nevertheless, it is clear that Serbia’s counter claim is much stronger than the claim submitted by Croatia, he noted. "The scale of the violence in Operation Storm, the number of the victims in a short period of time and under limited opportunities on the side of the perpetrators, as well as the consequences upon the life of the attacked group cannot be compared when any of the massive crimes described by the Applicant’s claim which covered the time period of five years," Obradovic said. "Nothing remotely similar can be said of the victim group that is the object of Croatia’s claim", he said, noting that the number of Serbs in Croatia has shrunk enormously since 1991. The dispute will be continued on March 18, when Croatia will present its observations on Serbia’s counter-claims. The second round of the hearings will take place from March 20- April 1. According to expert assessments, the final judgment, which cannot be appealed, should be delivered by the end of 2014 or in early 2015 and it will be binding for both countries.