![]() |
Compact version |
|
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
![]() |
Wednesday, 14 August 2024
![]() |
||
![]() |
![]() |
|
MILS NEWS 30/05/96Macedonian Information Liaison Service Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: "Macedonian Information Liaison Service" <mils@mils.spic.org.mk>CONTENTS
MILS SUPPLEMENTMILS NEWSSkopje, 30 May 1996[01] GLIGOROV: 'OSCE PRINCIPLES INCLUDED IN THE GLOBAL POLICY OF MACEDONIA''Principles of the Helsinki Final Act are included in the bases of the global policy of the Republic of Macedonia, both regarding the neighbours and all other subjects of the international community,' said Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov for the press yesterday in Helsinki, after signing the Helsinki Final Act. Gligorov stressed that the sovereign equality, restraining from threatening with using force and respecting the borders had been the crucial parameters for Macedonia to peacefully declare its independence in 1991. He said the Republic of Macedonia, as a fatherland of the Macedonian people and of the members of the Albanian, Turkish, Roma, Vlach and Serbian nationalities, was determined to respect the human rights and the basic freedoms, including the freedom of expression, of conscience, of religion.Macedonian Television reported that Gligorov and Finnish President Marti Ahtisari had discussed the bilateral relations and the possibilities for their improvement, as well as the situation in Macedonia and its efforts to join EU and NATO. Finnish President emphasized the importance of the peaceful policy and democratic processes in Macedonia, pointing out the role of President Gligorov in that context. He said the presence of UNPREDEP forces, which include Finnish soldiers, was of greatest importance for preserving the peace in Macedonia. President Ahtisari said he understood Macedonian stand that integrating in the EU should not be conditioned by the so-called regional approach. President Gligorov also met with Finnish entrepreneurs and talked about the participation of Finnish companies in the construction of 'Kozjak' water power station, with about $40 million. The entrepreneurs required guarantees for the credit to be given by Macedonian and Finnish governments. [02] QUALITATIVE ACCORDANCE OF EU-MACEDONIAN STANDS'After the last negotiations in Brussels, the Republic of Macedonia was finally separated from the former Yugoslavia territory and, with an alternative formulation, included in the South-Eastern Europe region,' said Macedonian Vice prime Minister Jane Miljoski, who led the Macedonian delegation in Brussels. He said that this move of the Union was a qualitative change, as Macedonia would now look for a regional support in the South-Eastern Europe, which is a wider region, in which the Republic is seriously interested.Progress had been made in the evolution clause of the draft Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation between Macedonia and the EU, although no guarantees had been given for a joined membership of Macedonia. As Miljoski informed the press, the new formulation read that Macedonia will be allowed to associate in Europe if it fulfills certain conditions: improvement of democracy, protection of human and minorities' rights, and progress in the economic and political reforms. He said the Agreement was rather harmonized and could be offered to be signed in the same form. Meanwhile, Macedonian Radio informed that agreements had been reached on giving Macedonia quotas for tobacco export on European markets, which used to belong to the former Yugoslav federation. [03] DIVIDING OF FORMER SFRY PROPERTY STILL UNCERTAINSir Arthur Wotts, Special EU Envoy in charge of the former SFRY succession issues, discussed with the Macedonian Foreign Minister Ljubomir Frchkovski and to the Macedonian expert group the succession issues yesterday in Skopje. Sir Wotts informed the press, after the talks, that still no mechanism had been established about the dividing of the former SFRY property. He added that at present only the sums are being defined. According to him, the final word will be given by the five republics, while the EU will only help a good solution to be found.Sir Arthur Wotts will today have talks with representatives of the Macedonian National Bank and of the Finance Ministry, after which he will continue his trip to Belgrade, Saraevo and Zagreb. [04] EXTENSION OF UNPREDEP MANDATE VERY POSSIBLEAs Macedonian Television reported, the UN Security Council yesterday had discussed the recomendation of the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali to extend the mandate of UNPREDEP in Macedonia for additional six months.The extension is considered almost certain in New York and it should be signed at today's formal session of the Security Council, said for MTV, Macedonian representative in the UN, Denko Maleski. The possibility for the extension of mandate after November '96 was also discussed yesterday, and solutions for financing the mission were looked for, due to the complex finance situation of the UN, added Maleski. [05] ACCEPTING OF MACEDONIA IN THE EUROPEAN TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION EXPECTEDMacedonian Transport Minister Dimitar Buzlevski left for Budapest yesterday to attend the session of the European Conference of Transport Ministers, in which around 40 Transport Ministers will participate. It is expected that Macedonia will be accepted as a full member, which will enable a certain quota of the universal CEMPT transport licenses to be provided. The main subject of the session will be adjustment of the East European roads and rail tracks to the EU criteria.[06] FINANCE ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN MACEDONIA AND SWITZERLANDAbdulmenaf Bedzeti, Minister of Development of the Republic of Macedonia finalised, with the President of the Swiss Confederation and Economy Minister Jean Pascal Dela Miran and other Swiss officials, in Switzerland yesterday, the realisation of the Swiss aid for Macedonia and several bilateral finance arrangements.[07] IRREGULARITIES IN THE ELECTIONS IN ALBANIAThe elections in Albania were held with a lack of legal standards and insufficient governmental cooperation, and the monitors had noticed breaking of basic electoral criteria.This was announced yesterday, according to 'Royter', by the OSCE monitoring report . The report reads that some decisions of the Electoral Commissions had been made under pressure of the government. Meanwhile, agencies reported that demonstrations of the opposition parties members had continued in Tirana, and a member of the Socialist Party of Albania was murdered. [08] MINISTER FILIPCHE: 'NOT A USUAL FOOD POISONING'Macedonian Health Care Minister Ilija Filipche yesterday informed the Parliament that the pupils from Tetovo, who were on an excursion in Struga, were very possibly not poisoned by food. He called on the political parties to restrain from politicization of this case and to leave the doctors to do their job.It was his answer to the question of the MP Hisen Ramadani, while the Education Minister Sofia Todorova said she had already visited the School Ambulance in Tetovo and that an official announcement would follow soon. At yesterday's Parliament session, over 130 questions were asked by the deputies agenst the Government. Stevan Pavlevski was appointed a new Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Macedonia. There are ten other items on the Agenda to be discussed today, including the proposed Laws on Territorial Dividing, Broadcasting and on Telecommunications. Macedonian Television reported that two initiatives of the Liberal Party to have Commissions formed will be again put on the Agenda, which had been withdrawn at the previous session. [09] CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE LAW ON SIGNATURES IN PROCEDUREMacedonian Constitutional Court yesterday discussed the initiative to examine the constitutionality of the Law on Collecting Signatures for Scheduling Referendum on Early Elections and for Changing the Constitution. It was decided the matter to be discussed by experts during the following month. The initiators claimed that the Law violated the constitutional right for any citizen or institution to be able to initiate collecting of signatures for a referendum, and the timing of signatures collecting was also limited.[10] CONSUMERS OWE $50 MILLION TO ELECTRICAL INDUSTRYExecutive Board of the public enterprise on electricity production and distribution in Macedonia concluded at yesterday's session that the financial situation of the enterprise was worrying, despite the great electricity production in the last several months. The reason was said to be that the consumers owe more than $50 million to this enterprise, because they had not paid their bills. The enterprise announced that additional efforts will be made to have the bills paid, and warned of the danger to bring the system to a collapse.[11] NEW IDENTITY CARDS FROM OCTOBERMacedonian Internal Affairs Ministry will start issuing new identity cards from October, reads today's 'Vecer'. They will be different from the current ones and will look like credit cards. They will contain of only one leaf, the full names will be written in Macedonian language and in Cyrillic alphabet, plus in the languages and alphabets of the nationalities were requested. All the other data will be written only in Macedonian Language. The citizens will have to change their old IDs within two years.[12] MACEDONIAN JOURNALISTS ABOUT THE LAW ON BROADCASTINGMacedonian Association of Journalists yesterday reacted to the proposed Law on Broadcasting, saying that it should be passed in three phases and simultaneously with the Laws related to it, such as the one on Macedonian Radio and Television.The Association required public and commercial broadcasting to be strictly separated, and the pre-payments of the citizens to be put in a separate fund, and not to be an income for the state budget. They also considered that a Broadcasting Council should be authorized to manage the broadcasting. The announcement continued that as the Internal Affairs Minister did not explain his statements about journalists the Associatio considered it as harmful. The Presidency reported that the eight journalists of the daily 'Dnevnik' had not submitted a request to leave the Association and that they had been misinforming the public with their tendentious articles. MILS SUPPLEMENT[13] 'Hunger Strikers Are Rejecting The Suspicions'('Dnevnik', 30 May 1996)Members of the Union of Independent and Autonomous Trade Unions, who are striking in front of the Macedonian government, were received yesterday by the Vice Prime Minister Ljube Trpeski, although not as independent trade union members, but as citizens. 'Government representatives said we were illegitimate and refused our requests to improve the conditions for the strike, saying that we had chosen the location by ourselves. They suggested us to continue striking inside the Union premises, but we refused that. We spent the night under the bridge and next to the monument to hide from the rain. We are determined to continue the strike, and we want to discuss our requests with the Prime Minister,' said Blagoja Ivanovski, President of the Union. Not a single citizen joined the strike till yesterday, and only about thirty had signed in the support book. Simultaneously, the suspicions about the real motives of the strikers are appearing. A so-called periodical programme of the Union was revealed, which was, allegedly, supposed to be completed till the day after tomorrow. According to it, the Independent Trade Union members were planning something much more than a hunger strike. Namely, the document read that they were going to 'enter by force' in the Town Assemblies and start hunger striking there. It was planned a 'forceful entering in the employment bureaus to take place till May 2, and in the social care centres till May 15'. The next step was supposed to be a 'strike of the railways and road transport system, ultimately conditioned by a resignation of the government', and all to end with a general strike. The programme, which included support activities for the action of collecting 150,000 signatures, read that non- repayable loan was planned to be asked from the All- Macedonian Congress of George Atanasovski. There were some notifications that the Union had already borrowed DM 3,000 to organize a strike last year. The strikers had rejected all the accusations and explained: 'The periodical programme, parts of which were presented to the public, was prepared by Stojan Nikolov and Atanas Lefterov. It was proposed, but we rejected it at the Union session. The programme was neither signed nor sealed. We adopted a 'cleared text' of it, which is not in accordance with the presented one. We are not backed by the loans from George Atanasovski, but by the people,' stressed Blagoja Ivanovski. They described Stojan Nikolov as a 'national traitor' because he had, allegedly, joined their opponent Stavre Janev, President of the Trade Union of Individual Farmers, which seceded last year. The strikers showed us a document which read that the Coordinate Board of the Union had dismissed Stojan Nikolov on April 27. It was interesting to read in it that Nikolov and Lefterov were obliged to submit a written report on the borrowed DM 3,000, and that they were threatened by a court procedure. Whatever, all of that creates a new picture of the hunger strike. The periodical programme (according to the strikers, its first version) anticipated the following requests: social aid of DM 350 until being employed or retired; the lowest salary of DM 800; revision of all bankrupt and privatized enterprises; payment of all the pensions that had not been paid, etc. The requests of the hunger strikers now are more modest: social aid of 5,000 denars and minimum salary of 10,000 denars. There are, however, some new requests: moratorium on the disconnecting of water and electricity, due to unpaid bills; reducing the electricity price for 10%; opening public free food centers, which would be financed by the government and managed by the Union, etc. Nobody could predict at the moment how will the situation about the strike develop, whether the government will officially reject the requests or not. As we have found out from governmental sources, they have no space to start negotiations with the Trade Union members. The strikers said they had informed all the Embassies in Skopje and all the international institutions about their requests. They complained that the Red Cross did not give them blankets and beds, and that was why they called on the blood donators to boycott blood donating actions. The only request of the strikers approved was to use the public toilet in the vicinity. The strike is continuing. (end)mils news 30 May, 1996Macedonian Information Liaison Service Directory - Previous Article - Next Article |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |