YDS 12/20

Yugoslav Daily Survey Directory

From: ddc@nyquist.bellcore.com (D.D. Chukurov)

C O N T E N T S :

YUGOSLAVIA - CHINA - YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT HOLDS TALKS WITH QIAN QICHEN

MONTENEGRO PRESIDENT - PRESS CONFERENCE - CROATIA MUST MEET OBLIGATIONS ASSUMED IN DAYTON

YUGOSLAVIA - NATO - NATO TRANSPORT PLANES TO USE AIRPORT 'BEOGRAD'

FROM REPUBLIKA SRPSKA - REPUBLIKA SRPSKA PREMIER CALLS ON SERBS TO COOPERATE WITH IFOR

O P I N I O N - WAR IN BOSNIA COULD HAVE ENDED IN 1993

YUGOSLAVIA - GREAT BRITAIN - CHALKER: BRITAIN WILL CONTINUE TO HELP REFUGEES IN YUGOSLAVIA

ALBANIA - KOSOVO - ALBANIA'S PRESIDENT DISCARDS DEMANDS FOR KOSOVO'S SECESSION

YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT HOLDS TALKS WITH QIAN QICHEN Peking, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav President Zoran Lilic and Chinese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said Tuesday that talks between Yugoslav and Chinese officials, currently underway in Peking, will help promote bilateral cooperation in all fields, from politics to sports. Qian said he was very pleased to learn that the Bosnian peace agreement had been reached. He also said that the suspension of sanctions against Yugoslavia was very important for the country's economic recovery. Qian said that China and he personally would do everything to help Yugoslavia return to international organizations. Lilic reiterated that Yugoslavia highly appreciated Peking's principled position towards the crisis in the former Yugoslavia and its opposition to the use of force and sanctions in resolving international disputes. Lilic said the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro should speedily return to international organizations and financial institutions, because only then will it be able to guarantee peace and stability in the region. Qian stressed that China has always seen Yugoslavia as a factor of peace and stability in the Balkans and in Europe. It is now clear that it would have been impossible to establish peace without the policy of peace pursued by Yugoslavia and Serbia and the signing of the Bosnia peace agreement was an acknowledgment of their role by the entire international community, Qian said. Qian said that China maintained that the lifting of the anti-Yugoslav sanctions should not be made conditional on any other issue because Yugoslavia has fulfilled all conditions and has sustained enormous damages through the sanctions. The two sides also examined other international issues and noted that the two countries have similar or identical views on many points.

MONTENEGRO PRESIDENT - PRESS CONFERENCE

CROATIA MUST MEET OBLIGATIONS ASSUMED IN DAYTON Podgorica, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - Yugoslavia will recognize Croatia once it meets the obligations it has willingly assumed under the Dayton agreement in terms of a full normalization of relations between the two states, Montenegro President Momir Bulatovic said Tuesday. Bulatovic told a regular news conference that Yugoslavia was ready to wait for 'favourable internal conditions in Croatia for the fulfilment of the respective obligations.' 'However, we cannot and will not renounce our interests which are contained in the text of the accord,' he stressed. The Montenegro President said Croatia was not showing enough readiness to fulfil the obligations relating to the Adriatic peninsula of Prevlaka. Bulatovic, who was member of the Yugoslav delegation at the talks in Dayton, said the Dayton agreement was basically fair and, therefore, a long-term one. Asked about the possibilities of Yugoslavia joining the NATO 'Partnership for peace' programme, Bulatovic said the issue was not a taboo and similar initiatives should be decided about without prejudices. He told the press that it was the duty of Yugoslavia to investigate the charges raised against its citizens by the International Tribunal for Crimes in the former Yugoslavia but it had no right to extradite them. The Montenegro President said Yugoslavia wanted quickly and correctly to resolve the issues of succession on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia, as a state, 'does not base its actions on its current economic interests when matters of continuity and succession are involved,' Bulatovic stressed.

YUGOSLAVIA - NATO

NATO TRANSPORT PLANES TO USE AIRPORT 'BEOGRAD' Belgrade, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - The Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia announced on Tuesday it would provide for the transit of an international peace force for Bosnia and Herzegovina via Yugoslavia's roads, railways, and through its air and waterway traffic. As was made public by the Yugoslav Information Secretariat, it was said - at a session of the Yugoslav Government Committee on Cooperation with the U.N. peace force, presided over by Prime Minister Radoje Kontic - that already announced are the landings of a group of NATO transport aircraft at Belgrade's Airport 'Beograd'. The Committee was notified that December 15 marked the end of a three-year-old mission of U.N. military observers at the airports in the F.R.Y. pursuant to U.N. Security Council resolutions 781 and 786 which had banned military flights in the air space of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The U.N. peace force headquarters decided, after the peace agreement was signed in Paris, that military observers should leave the F.R.Y. by the end of this December, the Yugoslav Information Secretariat said.

FROM REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

PREMIER CALLS ON SERBS TO COOPERATE WITH IFOR Belgrade, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - Newly-appointed Premier of Republika Srpska Rajko Kasagic Tuesday night called on Bosnian Serbs to cooperate with IFOR units that were to be deployed on their territory. He said cooperation was necessary as the future of Bosnian Serbs depended on this cooperation, French new agency AFP reported. Kasagic said in his first appearance after taking over as Prime Minister that he has formed a Government 'to serve peace'. Pointing out that his Government would focus on establishing the rule of law, he assessed that IFOR's assistance would be of use to Republika Srpska to successfully realize this task.

O P I N I O N

WAR IN BOSNIA COULD HAVE ENDED IN 1993 Geneva, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - The war in Bosnia could have ended in the summer of 1993, former Co-Chairman of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, Thorvald Stoltenberg, told journalists, bidding them farewell, at the Geneva Palais des Nations. Stoltenberg said that the so-called Owen-Stoltenberg plan which was approved by all the three parties to the conflict in Bosnia, and later rejected by the Muslim parliament, differed slightly from the Dayton agreement, recently signed in Paris. The difference, Stoltenberg said, is that in 1993 there were three entities - Serb, Muslim and Croat, and now there are two entities - the Muslim-Croat federation and the Republika Srpska. If the peace plan had been approved in 1993, the casualty toll would have been lower by tens of thousands and the same goes for refugees, Stoltenberg said. Stoltenberg said that it was in the first place the United States who urged the signing of the Dayton peace agreement, and than the European Union and Russia. Unfortunately, in 1993 there was no such international support, Stoltenberg said. Stoltenberg said he was cautiously optimistic about the implementation of the Paris agreement and stressed that he believed peace would be established in the first place because the people in Bosnia and in the Srem-Baranja region do not want war. Stoltenberg said he believed that the carrying out of the peace agreement depended on the implementation of the agreement for the Srem-Baranja region. He insisted on 'massive international presence' in that region too, just as in Bosnia, as a guarantee for the agreement to be carried out.

YUGOSLAVIA - GREAT BRITAIN

BRITAIN WILL CONTINUE TO HELP REFUGEES IN YUGOSLAVIA Belgrade, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - State Minister at the Foreign Office Linda Chalker said Tuesday in Belgrade that the British Government would continue to help Serbs in Sarajevo and would in late January send an official to assess the position of refugees in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Chalker talked with Yugoslav Minister without portfolio Tomica Raicevic, Deputy Foreign Minister Radoslav Bulajic and Serbia's Commissioner for Refugees Bratislava Morina. Chalker toured the collective accommodation at Belgrade's suburb Krnjaca hosting currently about 600 refugees. She talked there with the four members of Djurdjevic family, which fled Zagreb in 1992, and after asking them if they intended to return they said that in the Croatian capital they experienced such great humiliation that they preferred to remain in Serbia.

ALBANIA - KOSOVO

ALBANIA'S PRESIDENT DISCARDS DEMANDS FOR KOSOVO'S SECESSION Bonn, Dec. 19 (Tanjug) - Albanian President Sali Berisha urged on Tuesday that the question of Serbia's southern province of Kosovo and Metohija be resolved according to the principles of inviolability of borders and respect of human and minority rights. Berisha, speaking at a press conference here, turned down demands by the secessionist movement of ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia to obtain the state of their own. He set out that the question of Kosovo and Metohija should be resolved so as to secure a durable peace and stability in the region. Berisha also proposed negotiations between the Belgrade authorities and representatives of Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija. A democratic and peaceful solution would be the highest gain from the disentanglement of the problem, said Berisha and discarded Albania's participation in the possible negotiations.