12 November 2003 Morning Edition

Kosovo News

· Kosovo Albanian sentenced to 10 days in prison for entering central Serbia (AP)
· UNMIK police meet Belgrade Kosovo officials (Beta)
· Coordination centre official expects results of UNMIK investigation into KLA (Tanjug)
· New York mayor to visit Kosovo (Beta)
· Serbian judiciary organs to hand over KLA crime documents to UNMIK (Serbian Government)

Regional News

· Serbian ultra nationalist, seeking presidency, backs war crimes suspects (AFP)
· Serbian presidential election to fail again: poll (AFP)
· SFOR helps Bosnian Serb army destroy munitions (dpa)
· Serbia puts plan for military co-operation to neighbors (F.T)

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ An ethnic Albanian from Kosovo has been sentenced to 10 days in prison for crossing illegally into central Serbia, the BETA news agency reported Tuesday.

Though Kosovo officially remains part of Serbia, it has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999, when NATO bombing forced the Serb police and army to end their crackdown against independence-minded ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo is separated from the rest of Serbia with a boundary. Serbian soldiers patrolling the boundary on Monday arrested a Arben Beqiri, who had left Kosovo and entered Serbia outside the official checkpoints that serve as control posts, the Belgrade-based news agency Beta reported.

Beqiri was sentenced by a court in Kursumlija, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Belgrade. A youth accompanying him was released, Beta reported.
Authorities in Kursumlija have in the past four years complained of armed incidents they say are carried out by ethnic Albanians who have passed the Kosovo boundary illegally.

UNMIK police meet Belgrade Kosovo officials (Beta)

BELGRADE -- Tuesday - UNMIK police representatives visited Belgrade today to meet officials of the Kosovo Coordination Centre, to discuss photographs published recently in daily Vecernje novosti.

The photographs showed an unidentified person in a Kosovo Liberation Army uniform holding two severed human heads.

The Coordination Centre, in a statement, described the meeting as extremely significant, successful and constructive, adding that ongoing police cooperation was also discussed.

Attending the meeting were the deputy chief of the UNMIK police Central Investigative Criminal Unit. The Coordination Centre delegation included the heads of the police, security, judiciary and human rights divisions, together with representatives of the Bureau for the Missing and Abducted.

Coordination centre official expects results of UNMIK investigation into KLA crime

BELGRADE, Nov 11 (Tanjug) - Head of the legal and human rights department at the Kosovo-Metohija coordination centre Vladimir Bozovic told Tanjug that Tuesday's talks with representatives of UNMIK's competentent department, on the occasion of photographs published in the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti, showing a KLA member holding two severed human heads in his hands had been successful and that he expected that positive effects would be felt soon.

"We exchanged information and I expect positive effects soon, not only in connection with the identification of victims seen at the photo, but also other victims, since there are more of them, as well as the arrest of the perpetrators of these crimes," Bozovic said.

New York mayor to visit Kosovo (Beta)

PRISTINA -- Tuesday - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is to visit Pristina for the celebration of the Albanian national holiday Flag Day, local media report today.

Bloomberg is to arrive in Kosovo two days ahead of the November 28 holiday.

He is scheduled to meet the heads of Kosovo institutions and US troops in the Camp Bond steel military base.

Serbian judiciary organs to hand over KLA crime documents to UNMIK

Serbian Government

Belgrade, Nov 11, 2003 - Head of the Judiciary and Human Rights Department of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Vladimir Bozovic said on Tuesday that Deputy UNMIK Chief in charge of police and justice Jean Christian Cady confirmed that the UNMIK is now prepared to collect and examine the documents on crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo-Metohija from the Serbian judiciary organs.

Bozovic said that the Judiciary and Human Rights Department will take part in the investigation into the murder of the three members of the Stolic family in Obilic.
He also confirmed that the Coordinating Center's representatives will meet with the deputy chief of the UNMIK's Police Central Criminal Investigation Unit (CCIO), who is coming to Belgrade on Tuesday, to discuss a photograph showing one of the massacres carried out by KLA members in Kosovo, published in the Belgrade daily Vecernje novosti, with the intention of launching an investigation into the matter.
According to Bozovic, the meeting will also focus on the murder of Serbian children in Gorazdevac, the murder of professor Miomir Savic in Cernica and the recent attack on Aleksandar Stojkovic near Gnjilane.

Serbian ultra nationalist, seeking presidency, backs war crimes suspects

BELGRADE, Nov 11 (AFP) - Serbian ultra nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic, a candidate in weekend presidential elections in the republic, urged thousands of his supporters Tuesday to vote for him as show of support for war crimes suspects.
Nikolic, 49, of the ultra nationalist Serbian Radical Party of far-right politician Vojislav Seselj -- on trial for war crimes at the UN tribunal in the Hague -- addressed a rally in Belgrade.

"You will not vote only for me, but also for Seselj and all those imprisoned in The Hague," he said.

Nikolic said a victory for him in Sunday's election in Serbia "will be a victory for those hiding in mountains and thick forests like Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic," Bosnian Serb wartime leaders also wanted by the UN tribunal.

"If anyone has evidence of any Serb who has committed any war crime, I call on him to bring it here, so we can try them here. We do not like to be called war criminals," Nikolic said.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 people, according to police estimates, carried Serbian flags and posters of Seselj, imprisoned in The Hague since February, as well as photos of Karadzic and Mladic.

They booed and whistled at any mention of Serbia's reformist authorities, whom Nikolic accused of "destroying" the republic.

The elections will be the third attempt in 14 months for Serbia's voters to elect a president.

Previous elections in September and December 2002 were declared void when the turnout failed to pass the required 50-percent threshold.

The speaker of the parliament, Natasa Micic, has been acting president since December.

The two front-runners are thought to be the moderate Dragoljub Micunovic, the present speaker of the parliament of Serbia-Montenegro, and the hard-line Nikolic.
Nikolic was his Radical Party's presidential candidate in the void election of September 2002.

Serbian presidential election to fail again: poll
BELGRADE, Nov 11 (AFP) - Serbia's presidential election on Sunday is likely to fail again because of insufficient turnout, according to a new survey published on Tuesday.
The Centre for Policy Studies poll of 1,636 adults showed that although just over half the respondents said they intended to vote, the real turnout would probably be less than the required minimum of 50 percent.
According to Serbian law, at least 50 percent of the country's 6.5 million registered voters must cast their ballots for the results to be declared valid.
The election has been invalidated twice due to a failure to meet the participation threshold, leaving Serbia with an interim president for much of the past year.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which observes elections throughout the Balkans, has unsuccessfully lobbied the Serbian government to change the law.
"We are disappointed that our request to reduce the 50 percent threshold was not taken on board," OSCE spokesman Rory Keane told AFP.
The Centre for Policy Studies also said that if parliamentary elections were held now, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party would emerge as the second biggest party in the country.
Early general elections are expected to be held in the coming months.

SFOR helps Bosnian Serb army destroy munitions

Sarajevo (dpa) - The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina helped the Bosnian Serb Army Tuesday to dispose of and destroy unserviceable and unsafe munitions, SFOR announced.

SFOR spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Tod told reporters, ``Something in the order of 1,000 metric tons need to be destroyed'' as part of the operation.

Owing to the significant quantity of munitions, NATO has reinforced peacekeeping troops in Bosnia with an additional Belgian team to support SFOR activities, Tod said.
Three more U.S. teams and Italian experts were on standby in Kosovo to deploy to Bosnia, if necessary, he said.

The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina left the country burdened with weapons which the military in Bosnia found too expensive to maintain due to a lack of resources.

Serbia puts plan for military co-operation to neighbors
By PETER SPIEGEL and STEFAN WAGSTYL
Source: Financial Times
Date: November 12, 2003
Edition Name: Europe Ed1
Section: EUROPE
Page: Page 2
Serbia and Montenegro, the successor state to the former Yugoslavia, has approached Croatia and other neighboring countries with offers of military co-operation just four years after the end of the last of the wars fought under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president
Belgrade hopes that peaceful military exchanges can help build trust even among states where memories of the conflicts are still fresh. Serb forces were involved in all three of the conflicts in the region in the 1990s - in Croatia, Bosnia and, in 1999, in Kosovo.
But the democratic reformers who overthrew Mr Milosevic in 2000 and dispatched him to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague argue that Serbia and Montenegro now has a central role to play in rebuilding regional security.

Boris Tadic, defence minister, told the Financial Times yesterday: "We were in a very bad situation with our neighbors. From our point of view, organized co-operation with our neighbors is a very good way to go forward and to show our media and our public opinion that we have to share responsibility for security challenges in our region."

Mr Tadic said Serbia and Croatia planned to exchange military attaches in the near future. While discussions for further co-operation were at an early stage, joint exercises could follow. He had also had informal talks with his counterparts in Albania and Macedonia.

Separately, Serbia is trying to join Nato's entry-level co-operation programme, Partnership for Peace, which already covers much of the region, including Croatia, Albania and Macedonia. Bosnia is hoping to join in the next few months.

However, Serbia's attempt has been delayed by Nato's demands that it should hand over to the Hague further alleged war criminals, including General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander, who some western intelligence experts think is in Serbia.

Mr Tadic said Belgrade was co-operating in the case of General Mladic but it was concerned that the war crimes tribunal was extending its list of suspects.