Yugoslav Daily Survey, 97-05-26

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From: Yugoslavia <http://www.yugoslavia.com>

Yugoslav Daily Survey

CONTENTS

[01] TALKS WITH INDIAN TRADE MINISTER

[02] HIGH-LEVEL MEETING OF YUGOSLAV AND US BUSINESSMEN

[03] DUTCH MAGAZINE SAYS HAGUE TRIBUNAL EXPERIMENTS WITH PEOPLE

[04] 4,000 TESTIMONIES HAVE BEEN COLLECTED

[05] RETURN OF ALL SERBS UNREASONABLE, TUDJMAN SAYS

[01] TALKS WITH INDIAN TRADE MINISTER

Tanjug, 1997-05-23

Yugoslav Chamber of Economy President Mihailo Milojevic talked Friday with Indian Trade Minister B.B. Ramaiah about promoting Yugoslav-Indian economic cooperation.

The Indian Minister, with a group of businessmen from that country, is visiting Belgrade, at the invitation of Yugoslav Foreign Trade Minister Boris Vukovic.

Milojevic pointed to the need for intensifying economic cooperation between the two friendly countries, especially in the field of technological cooperation. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia must greatly increase its presence on the world market, and economic cooperation with India will contribute to that, he said.

Milojevic assessed that conditions have been created for developing cooperation between the two countries without limitations because, he said, the Yugoslav economy has undergone significant reforms and many laws have been modified, and many changes are underway.

[02] HIGH-LEVEL MEETING OF YUGOSLAV AND US BUSINESSMEN

Tanjug, 1997-05-23

The Business Council of the United States and Yugoslavia wilt meet in New York on May 27. This will be an opportunity to revive and strengthen economic cooperation between the two countries.

This important meeting, the first following the lifting of the anti- Yugoslav sanctions, will be attended by a large delegation of Yugoslav businessmen and bankers and about 100 representatives of US corporations and financial institutions.

The Yugoslav delegation will be headed by Yugoslav Chamber of Commerce President Mihajlo Milojevic.

The Yugoslav delegation will try to reach agreement with US partners on re- opening US-based offices of Yugoslav chambers, banks and companies and on unfreezing Yugoslav funds in the country, Milojevic said.

[03] DUTCH MAGAZINE SAYS HAGUE TRIBUNAL EXPERIMENTS WITH PEOPLE

Tanjug, 1997-05-24

The trial and verdict handed down to Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic by the Hague International War Crimes Tribunal shows that the Tribunal 'continues politically to experiment with people,' the Dutch magazine Manifest said in its latest issue.

The magazine's expert for the Hague Tribunal Els Kaszo raised a series of questions to point to the obvious politicalization of the Hague-based ad hoc institution.

He said the Tadic case had been used to show that 'greater Serbian ideas' were allegedly responsible for the war.

The fact that Tadic was 'blamed for all the crimes in the war' in an avalanche of press reports together with and in the same fashion as Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic 'confirms the political character of the trial,' the magazine noted.

Manifest said the Tribunal had greatly needed the 'media excitement' in connection with the Tadic case because it had barely managed to survive till then.

'Everyone struggles for one's job and career. Jurists, lawyers and judges, but journalists, court experts and others are also no exception,' the magazine stressed.

'This means that the political experimenting with people will continue, at least for the time being,' the Dutch magazine said and set out that it was certain the 'big fish' would never be brought to trial.

'I am thinking of the big chess players in Germany, the USA and Teheran. They will be able to go un moving the pieces unpunished in a dark game for power and natural resources,' the author of the article pointed up.

'Yugoslavs, regardless of whether Croats, Muslims or Serbs, will be scapegoats, and occasionally some of them will be tarred and feathered a bit to please the 'international community',' the magazine said in conclusion.

[04] 4,000 TESTIMONIES HAVE BEEN COLLECTED

Tanjug, 1997-05-25

Yugoslav Commission President for collecting data about war crimes in the territory of the former Yugoslavia Zoran Stojanovic told Tanjug's panel that in the past three years 4,000 testimonies have been collected from witnesses and victims.

'We have also acquired many photographs, video material, documents, material evidence etc. It is especially important that the testimonies given to the Commission can be used also in foreign courts, as they were conducted in line with our law on criminal proceedings, and not informally, like nongovernmental organizations do,' said Stojanovic who was recently named again Commission President by the Federal Government.

Although testimonies given to our examining magistrates are relevant in a criminal trial aborad, he pointed out that this was not the case with the Tribunal in the Hague. According to their rules of procedure, hearings are conducted by their investigators, so that our testimonies are practically equated with informal statements to nongovernmental organizations.

Referring to the work of the Hague Tribunal, he repeated an earlier position that "it is a political instrument of the most influential country in the world for disciplining small nations and disobedient regimes,' and noted that Croatia was increasingly having problems with the Hague Tribunal because 'it seems it is no longer as obedient as it used to be.'

Stojanovic assessed however that the Tribunal had become a reality and should be treated as such, and we should accept to cooperate with it.

'We are especially concerned by the Tribunal's unequal criteria and legal definitions of crimes. When Serbs are concerned, commanders of camps were Muslims or Croats had allegedly been tortured and killed, the indictment said genocide had been committed, and when the victims are Serbs, indicted Croats and Muslims are not charged with genocide, not even with war crimes against the civilian population, but with crimes against prisoners of war, although the victims were also women and old people,' he said.

Pointing out that not even the raping of Serb women is treated as rape, but torture of prisoners of war, Stojanovic affirmed that all this was part of the attempt to show Serbs as the aggressors, and we arrive at the absurd conclusion that serbs even in cases when they were victims are blamed for it.'

Referring to cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, Stojanovic assessed tat it was insufficient, although there have been joint activities in the Celebic case and now in the case of Croatian operation Storm, and pointed to some 'technical' problems, such as unresolved issue of cost of stay of witnesses in the Hague.

[05] RETURN OF ALL SERBS UNREASONABLE, TUDJMAN SAYS

Reuter, 1997-05-25

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman stood firm on Sunday against growing Western pressure for all displaced Croatian Serbs to be allowed to return safely to their pre-war homes and said such demands were unreasonable.

Western ambassadors joined together on Friday to express concern to Tudjman over the slow and problem-ridden return of ethnic Serbs. The move followed reports of harassment and expulsion of elderly Serbs in central Croatia.

"We said we would solve the problem of the return of Serb refugees who are in Eastern Slavonia," Tudjman said in an interview carried by state radio and television. "But to make conditions and say we have to take back all the Serbs who left Croatia is unreasonable. It is contrary to everything that's been happening in the world ever since its beginning," he said.

"No one is making demands that all Sudeten Germans go back," said Tudjman, referring to ethnic Germans who left communist Czechoslovakia after World War Two.

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