11 November 2003 Afternoon Edition

Kosovo News

· Additional security for UN headquarters in Kosovo (FoNet)
· Iraq Security: The Kosovo Caveat (Washington Post)

Regional News

· OSCE considers Montenegrin human-trafficking report (Beta)
· Milosevic says Srebrenica was not in Serb interests (Beta)
· Serbia and Russia reach deal on debts (B92)

PRISTINA -- Tuesday – A wall and barbed-wire fence have been erected around the United Nations headquarters in Kosovo, media in Pristina report today.

A spokesman for the UN mission said they had received orders from New York to increase security at all UN mission headquarters following the attack in Baghdad.

Iraq Security: The Kosovo Caveat

JOAN MCQUEENEY MITRIC Washington Post

Letter to the Editor

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the United States does not need to deploy additional troops to Iraq [front page, Nov. 3] despite the rash of well-coordinated incidents against U.S. military targets and the mounting death toll. His reason is that the United States is quickly training large numbers of Iraqis to take over their own security. One hundred thousand already are on the job, he says, and this number will double by September.

Giving Iraqis a sense of investment in their own future is imperative. But the rapid pace at which the turnover of essential police and public security tasks is proceeding is cause for concern. Without the proper vetting, training and probation of potential members of these Iraqi military and civilian police corps, we might make the same mistakes we did in Kosovo following the 1999 NATO air campaign.

Anxious to leave the Balkans in 1999, U.S. and U.N. peacekeepers jumped in bed with known extremists in the Kosovo Liberation Army and allowed large numbers of them to assume critical positions. As a freelance writer who has just spent two months in Serbia, I can say that the results were disastrous, both for law-abiding Kosovar Albanians and ethnic Serbs and Gypsies (Roma) who were victims of the "trained" police force's thuggish misrule.

Kosovo is a small place compared with Iraq; Kosovo had a troop ratio (military and police) of one peacekeeper for every 45 people. In Iraq last month, the troops-to-population ratio stood at one peacekeeper per 150 people.

The consequences of a too-swift transfer of security would be even more disastrous in Iraq, where religious factions, income disparities and a lack of experience with power-sharing, much less democracy, make the country a potential powder keg.

Serbia and Russia reach deal on debts (B92)

BELGRADE -- Tuesday – Serbia and Russia have reached agreement on settling their mutual debts, Serbian Finance Minister Bozidar Djelic has told B92 from Moscow.

Djelic said the two sides had struck a deal on Russia’s debt to Serbia and the $246 million owed by Serbia’s oil monopoly to Russia’s Gazprom.

Under the deal, 80 per cent of the Serbian Oil Industry debt will be written off, while the remaining $46 million will be paid off through exports. Russia will invest in overhauling the “Djerdap” hydropower station.

The agreement must be ratified by the governments involved by the end of the year.

OSCE considers Montenegrin human-trafficking report (Beta)

VIENNA -- Tuesday – Experts from the OSCE and Council of Europe have submitted a report to the 55-member countries of the OSCE regarding Montenegro’s handling of an alleged human-trafficking case.

OSCE spokesman Richard Murphy said the report, alongside the response from the Montenegrin government, had been handed over last night. He said it was possible it would end up on the agenda of the OSCE Permanent Council session on Thursday. It is not yet known whether the findings will then be made public.

The report concerns Montenegro’s handling of the case a Moldovan woman who came forward a year ago with allegations against a number of people, including deputy state prosecutor Zoran Piperovic. A state probe was halted by Podgorica prosecutor Zoran Radonjic, who said there was insufficient evidence.

Both men have been dismissed since the OSCE submitted its report to the Montenegrin authorities.

Milosevic says Srebrenica was not in Serb interests (Beta)

THE HAGUE -- Tuesday – Slobodan Milosevic claimed at his trial today that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre could have been committed by forces working against Serb interests.

“Something like that may have been committed by someone working against both Muslim and Serb interests – someone insane and with a criminal mind”, the former Yugoslav president said whilst cross-examining a prosecution witness.

The witness, historian Robert Donia, had carried out an analysis of the minutes of the Bosnian Serb parliament during the war. Milosevic claimed the study demonstrated that in 1993 Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had warned that an attack on Srebrenica would end in bloodshed and serve to damage Serb interests.

Donia disputed this, saying that Karadzic had said the operation would endanger the main goal of securing international recognition for the Republika Srpska. Two years later, he said, the situation had changed and the main aim was to consolidate territory, hence the attack on the United Nations “safe-haven” in Srebrenica.

Between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the massacre that followed.