W Daily e-newspaper
• N° 15 • Belgrade, May 17, 2016
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WESTERN BALKANS e-MEDIA GROUP
Dacic: Serbia Committed to Constructive Dialogue Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has said that Belgrade is committed to a constructive dialogue with Pristina and the implementation of the agreements reached so far, but that Pristina has failed to take necessary steps "Due to a lack of political will and crisis of institutions in Pristina, it is with regret that I note that the key points of the Brussels agreement relating to the establishment and functioning of the Community have not been implemented yet", Ivica Dacic said at yesterday's meeting of the UN Security Council on the work of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). The circumstances in which the Serbs in Kosovo live are still very complex, and Serbia expects the international community, primarily the UN, to offer continued assistance in building trust as the only foundation for a normal life for everyone in Kosovo, he said. Serbia believes that commitment to EU integration represents the main driving force for the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina, with the expectation that the EU will continue to facilitate the dialogue, the minister said. Dacic underlined once again the importance of strengthening UNMIK's presence and role for Serbia, notably for Serbs and other non-Albanian communities living in Kosovo, voicing the
Tomislav Nikolic, President of Serbia: Maybe China has larger volume of trade with some other countries, but it will hardly find a country in which it enjoys greater respect. We have solid foundation for improving relations
expectation that UNMIK would continue to enforce its mandate under UNSC Resolution 1244. Special Representative of the UN Secretary General and UNMIK Chief Zahir Tanin has said at the Security Council meeting that he has taken note of reconciliatory messages coming from Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo
Vlora Citaku, Kosovo Ambassador to U.S: Over the last several weeks, we have proved that we are on an irreversible path to becoming an equal member of the family of free countries in the world
President Hasim Taci, adding that now it is time for a new momentum in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. Russia's representative at the meeting has said that Pristina is disregarding and trying to unilaterally change the agreement reached with Belgrade concerning the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO), with the EU's tacit approval.
Ban Ki-m moon, UN Secretary General: Although we notice a slowdown of the implementation of the agreements between Kosovo and Serbia, especially in the past 12 months, I hope that positive steps will be taken by EU negotiators
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LET YOUR DAY BEGIN WITH „SERBIA DAILY“ Our f ree t rial p eriod i s e nding t his Friday, M ay 2 0! If t here i s e nough s ubscribers, "Serbia D aily" w ill c ontinue t o b e published. A s o f M onday, M ay 2 3, "Serbia D aily" w ill b e d istributed only t o s ubscribers. This is the 15th issue of "Serbia Daily", a daily e-newspaper intended for foreign embassies, international organizations and companies. We are bringing you daily news, opinions, commentaries, analyses and interviews on political, business, social and cultural life in Serbia. Serbia Daily is issued every working day and distributed to subscribers by e-mail, by 6am the latest, to as many e-mail addresses as the subscriber wants. "Serbia Daily" is part of e-media network which we started with "Bosnia Daily", which marked 15 years of its successful existence and continual publication in April this year. Please feel free to contact and ask your colleagues in Bosnia and Herzegovina why they were our subscribers for so many years, and if they were satisfied with our professional and objective attitude toward actual events and
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Vucic Meets Chinese Delegation Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic met with Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China Liu Haixing, with whom he talked about a forthcoming visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Serbia
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his visit confirms our good bilateral relations, which will only be improving in the future, Vucic said at the beginning of the meeting. Vucic and Liu also discussed bilateral relations and cooperation in the fields of infrastructure, energy and telecommunications. Vucic said that he was satisfied about the way Chinese companies are implementing infrastructure projects in Serbia. He thanked China for its political support for preserving the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia, adding that Serbia, as a sincere friend, supported the One-China policy. Liu conveyed to Vucic the greetings from President Xi and Premier Li Keqiang and their congratulations on Vucic's election victory, stressing that the Serbian prime minister was a great friend of the Chinese people and that he had done a lot to improve the Sino-Serbian strategic partnership. He stressed that the Chinese President's visit to Serbia is of exceptional importance as it is the first visit by a Chinese president to Serbia in 32 years.
Liu Haixing and the Chinese delegation in Belgrade
President Xi Jinping will start his Europe tour with a visit to the Republic of Serbia, in order to show that how important Serbia is to China, said Liu. Vucic expressed a desire to visit the Zelezara Smederevo steelworks, the most successful example of cooperation between Serbia and China, together with President Xi. Also, on the same day Vucic received a letter from Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang following the victory in the recent parliamentary elections, in which he expressed the desire to further strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries.
Daily
Markers
BY EMIR SALIHOVIC EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Building Ties With China
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he statement by the President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolic, that the upcoming visit by the Chinese President Xi Jinping is "historic", may not be exaggeration. After all, the Chinese President chose Serbia as the starting point of his European tour. Not only today, but in recent weeks too, China was very present in Serbian news outlets, starting with Smederevo steel mill, into which a Chinese company invested 600 million USD, up to many bilateral meetings between the officials of the two countries. Having in mind a strategy by the current government to maintain good relations with both the East and West (Russia and China, particularly, and EU), and strive toward EU accession while at the same time keeping strong bonds with Russia (and apparently China too), these business agreements and mutual visits are just a natural unfolding of affairs. After all, while recent informal messages from EU side that recognition of Kosovo is de facto condition for joining EU, as European Parliament's (EP) Vice President Ulrike Lunacek said that she is one of a few high-ranking politicians of the EU who insist that the recognition of Kosovo is a condition for Serbia, at the same time the Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Haixing stated at the meeting with President Nikolic that "we highly appreciate Serbia's support to the One China policy and its understanding regarding the South China Sea issue. At the same time, China firmly supports Serbia's territorial integrity and sovereignty". Knowing President Nikolic's stand on Kosovo issue, and the statements by high ranking Serbian officials on that topic, China and Serbia may have more political topics in common, regardless of geographic distance, then Serbia and some EU countries, to whose club Serbia aspires to join one day.
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PINION
New Age, New Trends Many weekend trainings in coaching brought about the situation that almost anybody can name himself a Life Coach today
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aybe an idea that man by default communiSERBIA DAILY CONTRIBUTOR cates well with his environment still exists only in novels and movies. But, if we look around, we can see that everyone just speaks his own story, and that almost nobody actually listens to his interlocutor. An employee doesn't understand his manager, the manager doesn't understand the employee. A child doesn't understand the parent, and vice versa. A friend doesn't understand or even doesn't listen to his friend as he is too occupied by his smartphone. There had never been more available information in human history, and more talking through different mediums - and so little active listening and true understanding. Such a situation, naturally, brought into existence a new field of human endeavor, geared toward the resolution of that problem. It is Coaching - a discipline aimed to help an individual or a group to better understand themselves, people around them, but also to improve the possibility that they become heard and better understood by others. An idea that you have to pay in order to be listened to and understood is relatively new. Although psychotherapy exists on the scene for quite a while now, it is still somehow in the shadow in Serbia. Being quite expensive, and as it was considered a sort of shame to admit having psychological issues, psychotherapy never became too popular here. But, we live in times when anxiety is a general issue, and psychological problems - due to too much stress became so numerous that people got no will to hide them anymore. A massive need arouse for fast and practical solutions to problems, that it paved the way for appearance of Coaching. But as everything that happens today takes place in a field of market, and as the term "Coaching" is not well defined, and can be interpreted differently, quite a number of people in Serbia adopted the title of a "Life Coach", or personal development consultant. Coaching received a lot of space in media (as anything new and popular), so even the psychotherapists had to start using that term in order to keep their clients. Also, the
BY NEBOJSA KOSTIC
appearance of new methods which stretch in between the psychotherapy and coaching (like Neurolinguistic Programming, NLP, for instance) started to act as a bridge netween those two areas, lending to psychotherapy a bit of commercial flavor, and to coaching the legitimacy of a valid method for psychological help. Seeing the popularity of Coaching even some homeopathy practitioners started using the term, in order to exploit its popularity. However, in the times we live in there is an increasing need for clear and concrete solutions to problems, and homeopathy is slowly loosing that race. People are not interested into vague explanations like "deep inner healing processes" or terms like "inner blockages" etc. They want clear definition of a problem, and clear steps toward its solution. Even in the area of the so called "energy medicine" new methods appear which deserve to become part of general coaching methodology, like Pranic Healing, which is more concrete when it comes to determining and solving problems, and supports regular and active work on self improvement, than just consummation of sugar pills and waiting for something to happen. Many weekend trainings in coaching brought about the situation that almost anybody can name himself a Life Coach today. Therefore there appeared a need to define standards which will delineate what Coaching is, and what it is not. Different associations appeared that try to position themselves as supreme authority in the field, but the trouble is to differentiate between the efforts to establish standards in Coaching, and effort to attract clients and position oneself on the market. Coaching, however, is not medicine, and it is not easy to establish standards that could be accepted globally, as World Health Organization does for medicine. It is a perfect situation for those who got money and ability to organize, to make an association, establish their own standards and gradually monopolize the market. As with everything else, Serbia will have to wait for a solution to appear globally, before it attempts to implement it back home in the next few decades. Until then, there will be a bitter fight on the local market between people who got trained for many years in high quality coaching approaches, and those who completed just a few weekend workshops, or various alternative healers, and those with good connections in media.
Publisher: WESTERN BALKANS e-MEDIA GROUP z POENTA d.o.o. Sarajevo, Augusta Brauna 3 z Editor - in - Chief: Emir Salihovic z Editors: VLASTIMIR MIJOVIC, AMRA ZIMIC, RASID KRUPALIJA, DANIJELA MRKIC, SANJA LJUBICIC z Director: Amra Zimic z Office Assistant: VERICA GRAOVAC, MUSTAFA BAHTANOVIC, DTP: Bekir Tvrtkovic z Marketing: KAROLINA MIHAJLOVIC z GSM: 00 381 61 2768568, 00 381 11 4086 992, serbiadaily@sbb.rs
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Ministries: EU Integrations Merged with Foreign Affairs?
EU integrations ministry, covered in the current government by a minister without portfolio, "could be merged with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
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his is according to Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti, that said this was one of the solutions currently under consideration. It would allow a new cabinet to have the same number of ministries but one minister less - "as Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has announced." Similar solutions are already present in the region: Croatia has the Ministry of
Foreign and European Affairs, while Montenegro has the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integrations. Center for Foreign Policy NGO Director Aleksandra Joksimovic told the daily that "not all countries moving toward EU membership have solved the issue of the European department in a uniformed manner" - and that there are two possible solutions. One is a separate ministry, and another
Nikolic in Visit to Algeria Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic is making an official visit to Algeria until Wednesday, where he will meet with the country's top officials and sign several documents. During the visit, Nikolic will talk with his Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika who will present him with the National Order of Merit "El Athir". Nikolic will give Bouteflika the Order of the Republic of Serbia on a sash, granted on February 5 this year. The Serbian president will also meet with Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and sign a memorandum of understanding in the field of information
technology between the National Agency for Promotion and Development of Technological Parks and the Science Park Belgrade and a protocol on the cooperation between the two diplomatic academies. The two governments will also sign a culture cooperation program and a protocol on cooperation between the national libraries. While in Algeria, the Serbian president will also talk with Speaker of the People's National Assembly MohamedLarbi Ould Khelifa and Speaker of the Council of the Nation Abdelkader Bensalah.
Vucic Meets Ambassadors, EU Delegation Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic met with the ambassadors of the Quint countries and the head of the EU Delegation to Serbia to discuss the future of the country, reports Tanjug. Vucic said on his Twitter account that he and the ambassadors discussed "Serbia's future, political and economic
reforms and rule of the law." The prime minister spoke with the head of the EU Delegation to Serbia, Ambassador Michael Davenport, German Ambassador Axel Dittmann, Italian Ambasador Giuseppe Manzo, French Ambassador Kristin Moro, British Ambassador Denis Keefe and U.S. Ambassador Kyle Scott.
a merging with the MFA, she explained. "Both yield results. We are entering a phase of integrations where the manner in which they will be accompanied institutionally is very important, but also when integrations will permeate the entire administration," Joksimovic said. According to her, in some cases the two government departments are merged because of "personnel" reasons.
Stefanovic, Shengkun Discuss Fight Against Terror Minister of the Interior Nebojsa Stefanovic and Minister of Public Security of China Guo Shengkun agreed that it is necessary to further improve the cooperation between the police of the two countries in the fight against international terrorism and all forms of crime. The two officials discussed the additional police cooperation in preventing and monitoring radicalization on the Internet, improving information and communication technologies and strengthening forensic capacity of the two countries. Stefanovic underlined that it is necessary to establish closer cooperation between the representatives of the Service for the fight against terrorism and extremism of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior with colleagues from the Ministry of Public Security of China, reads a statement by the Ministry of the Interior.
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Serbia's Democrats Split Over Party Elections
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Serbia's once powerful Democratic Party is split over the right date to hold internal party elections
fter April's general elections in Serbia, which the governing Progressive Party won handsomely, the embattled and weakened proEuropean Democratic Party, DS, is entering internal elections that could lead to a new president and determine the party's course ahead of Serbia's presidential elections in 2017, writes Sasa Dragojlo for BIRN. According to the party's statute, internal party elections must be conducted within six months of the general election. The two main candidates are the current leader, Bojan Pajtic, and Dragan Sutanovac, a former Defence Minister and member of the party's main board. According to BIRN sources, Pajtic and Sutanovac are locked in dispute over the date of the inter-party elections, however. Sutanovac reportedly wants elections by the end of June, to give the party time to prepare for the next year's presidential elections and sort out a "chaotic situation" in the local boards across the country. Sutanovac is dissatisfied also that the party local board in Belgrade made an election deal with the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, the Socialist Party and right-wing DSS-Dveri coalition in the city's Stari Grad municipality. Many in the party were also not happy when Pajtic urged citizens to vote for the DSS-Dveri coalition in the repeat general elections held at 15 polling stations on May 4, since their rightist agenda is clearly opposed to the pro-European values that the Democrats advocate. Pajtic's leadership was further called into question when the Democrats lost power in Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina after 16 years in the general election. The province was Pajtic's powerbase. Contrariwise, Pajtic reportedly wants elections in August, after a new govern-
Democratic Party supporters at a rally
ment is formed, as he believes that internal party elections will draw attention away from the government's gorwing problems. He has justified his support for voting for Dveri on the grounds of their joint defence of democratic principles and free elections. According to BIRN sources close to the Democrats, around 85 out of 160 party boards want direct elections in which all members will have the opportunity to vote. "Pajtic does not have a lot of support outside Vojvodina and Sutanovac thinks direct elections will bring more good than bad to his candidacy," a party source close to Sutanovac told BIRN. Nikola Tomic, editor of the Belgrade weekly NIN, told BIRN that while Pajtic and Sutanovac have roughly equal chances, most Democratic Party members would like to see "a third person" as new president. "At this moment, both of them have fiftyfifty chances. However, most of the membership is not thrilled with them and would want to see someone else in the race," Tomic said. According to his findings, head of DS's
Parliamentary Group and Party Vicepresident, Natasa Vuckovic, is the most likely third option. "She is not so mainstream and keeps her ambition out of public sight, but she could be backed by many other influential members of the DS," Tomic said. The rule of inter-party elections within six months after every election could therefore result in a third party president in only four years. The Democrats have undergone many splits and divisions over this same period. After losing power in the 2012 general elections, former Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas replaced former Serbian President Boris Tadic as party chief. Two years later, Pajtic became head of the Democratic Party, following the early general elections, when party members chose him over Djilas. After this April's elections, parliament will still be dominated by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, led by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, which won 131 out of 250 seats. The once mighty Democratic Party polled only 6 per cent of votes, which gave them only 16 seats in parliament.
Zukorlic to Join Serbia's New Government? Outgoing President of the National Assembly Maja Gojkovic will "most likely" schedule the constitutive sitting of the new assembly for "June 3 or 4". This is what Belgrade-based daily Danas is reporting, adding that it learned Serbia's new government would be formed "a few days later, on June 8."
Beta agency is quoting the report that said consultations will be held between electoral lists represented in parliament and President Tomislav Nikolic, who gives the mandate to form a government. The article added that leader of the Bosniak Democratic Community
Muamer Zukorlic will join the government that will once again be headed by SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic. The daily quoted sources who said that "an agreement in principle on future cooperation in the government has been made - but did not say which portfolios were in question."
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Serbia Still Defenseless Against Floods
Even two years after catastrophic floods, Serbia is not safe, since more money and time is needed for a stable flood defense system, Blic newspaper reports
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arko Blagojevic, Director of the Office of Public Investments says for Blic newspaper that on 304 locations defense systems have been repaired with the money from donations, and that 29 more dams have been built in 2015. "The problem is that for 30 years preventive has been almost completely neglected. That is confirmed by the fact
that only 19 dams have been constructed from 1995 to 2015. Prevention is an expensive and lasting process, so only for flood protection in Kolubara basin we need 20 years and 200 million Euros", Blagojevic says. He claims that all that was possible to do with available funds was done. Many other things still need to be done. "Serbia is not safe from floods yet, and to be
Home Care for Elderly Rise in Demand Home care is the most frequent social care service in Serbia, and among 145 local governments, 122 have it. However, since Regulation on Terms and Standards of Social Care was issued in May 2013, this service has been licensed in only 23 municipalities. Geronto-maid is one of the most wanted occupations, and in Belgrade 632 persons are waiting to receive this service, while there are 655 maids already at work, caring about elderly and week, Blic newspaper reports. The Ministry of Labor stresses that as well all other social care services, those who help at home need to obtain working license. The deadline for such licenses is the end of May this year. "Primary requirement to qualify for providing a home care is to provide a proof of registration at corresponding registrar as legal entity, to satisfy required standards such as location, space, equipment, organization, qualified personnel‌ ", Nena Damjanovic, social protection
inspector at the Ministry of Labor says. These services are available to children, adults and elderly, those who have limited physical and psychic capabilities that disable them to live at their homes independently and without regular help. Often, even if they are on priority list, future beneficiaries have to wait six months from the moment they submit their demand to the Center for Social Care until the first visit of geronto-maid. There is too much work to be done and one maid visits three customers a day for about two hours each. The schedule is even tighter when one of colleagues is on the leave, or sick. So beneficiaries are at loss. Only to satisfy Belgrade demand, some 150 geronto-maids are needed, insiders say. There are quite a few women interested for this job, but there is still a problem of ban on employment in public sector. Thus the doors open wide for private sector, but the competition on black market is high.
so, we need a lot of funds that we lack. The Law on Natural Disasters Risk Management is in preparation, and should be passed during summer", he says. Ranko Ristic, Professor of the Forestry Faculty thinks Serbia is not aware of dangers yet. "Since May 2014, a lot has been done, but at best those have been merely repairs of things damaged. We have done no work on prevention", Ristic warns.
Dacic Tours Serbian Church Destroyed in Fire According to Serbia's outgoing Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, Serbia will ask New York City to help rebuild the Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Sava. The church, located in Manhattan, was destroyed in a blaze on May 1, Orthodox Easter. Dacic, who is in New York for a UN Security Council session on Kosovo, toured the site, describing the fire and its outcome as "a great tragedy." "As far as I have been informed, an investigation is ongoing about this event, and its results will be awaited in order to determine the cause of the fire," he said, "Our community will insist that the full truth is established. Beside the insurance money, we will ask New York City through diplomatic channels to help rebuild, or build a new church."
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Better Governance Reaps Rewards
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International bodies are engaging with authorities across the region in a push to align standards with EU best practices
cross central and eastern Europe, governments, regulators and companies are attempting to reap the financial rewards of bringing compliance and auditing standards up to western levels. Such endeavour coincides with a broader effort to reduce corruption and increase good governance across a region where investors often have concerns over the potential for fraud. According to a 2016 study by Rand, a think-tank, corruption costs eastern European members of the EU as much as $196 billion a year in GDP. That estimate does not include countries outside the EU such as some Balkan states. International bodies such as the World Bank, supported by European governments and a range of professional services firms such as PwC, are engaging with authorities across the region in a push to align standards with EU best practices.
Healthy Returns When judged simply on economic growth rates, consumer spending trends and investment potential, central and eastern Europe is an easy sell for foreign capital looking for healthy returns. But many countries, especially those outside the EU in the Balkans and the region's south-east flank, still fall behind the west in terms of business practices, corporate reporting standards and tackling corruption, blunting companies' ability to trade or seek investment. It is a predicament that Ontotext, a Bulgarian data technology firm, knows well. "We've found raising funding in
By Henry Foy Financial Times
eastern Europe particularly challenging," says Atanas Kiryakov, the company's co-founder and chief executive. "Eastern Europe is perceived as a highrisk geography because of a lack of information and, historically, trust." For this to change, local entrepreneurs need to win support from people and organisations which are credible to foreign investors "to help them get a foot through the door and remove preconceptions", he adds. Funding is a key issue for small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs in the region, many of whom struggle to convince western capital to invest. That is a drag on economies: SMEs account for 99.8 per cent of all Serbian companies, for example, and provide 71 per cent of the country's jobs, according to the OECD. "What these countries need to do?.?.?. is align their standards with the EU's, to be able to access more of the broader market," said Henri Fortin, the World Bank's global lead for governance and financial reporting. "Investors are expecting more than they did maybe 10 years ago, and that has an element of challenge for the countries." If countries and their businesses raise their game, it will "give them to access to the European market, and make it easier for them to enter into contracts with EU peers, and facilitate access to finance", he says. Mr Fortin and World Bank colleagues are working with governments to change company laws, corporate reg-
ulations and accounting rules, alongside setting up regulatory bodies and institutions and implementing oversight processes. As a result of two programmes run by the World Bank to improve standards, Bosnia and Serbia recently passed new accounting and auditing laws, while International Financial Reporting Standards - designed as a common global language for business affairs have been adopted in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia.
New Systems But the key is making sure businesses embrace the new systems and authorities implement them, so that foreign investors are encouraged to provide capital or open trade discussions. "We have had good success in helping countries develop legal frameworks and adopt modern standards of financial reporting," says Jerry Decker, head of the World Bank's Centre for Financial Reporting Reform. "But to have the impact on the ground you have to get businesses to invest in their accounting systems." Businesses do not always anticipate that there will be a payback "so part of our challenge is to spread awareness of the benefits", he adds. Following its efforts in Kiev, PwC and the UK government have expanded their Good Governance Fund project to Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Bosnia. "There have been a lot of accomplishments. But the glass is both half full and half empty. This is something that involves long-term efforts," says Mr Fortin.
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Mihajlovic: Corridor 10 to be Completed in 2017
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Citizens would be able to travel on the highway from the north to the south of Serbia not be able to continue the work and get new jobs. Speaking about a visit to Serbia by Chinese President Xi Jinping in June and a commercial contract to be signed for the construction of the Belgrade-Budapest railroad, Mihajlovic said we should expect to see workers working on certain parts of the railway before the end of the current year. "In September, we are beginning the works on part of the railway funded from a Russian loan, as we have the both the money and the project prepared," said Mihajlovic, adding that the government had got the railway transportation sector moving, new trains were arriving, and works to overhaul the Belgrade-Nis railroad were to begin soon.
erbia's caretaker Minister of Transportation, Construction and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic said that Corridor 10 would be completed at the beginning of next year and our citizens would be able to travel on the highway from the north to the south of our country in 2017, reports Tanjug. "Corridor 11 is also important, and we will open for traffic a new section of about 35 kilometers, from Ljig to Preljina, in August. Next year, the citizens will travel to Cacak by highway," the minister said for Radio Television of Serbia (RTS). She stressed that the agreed deadlines had to be respected and those construction companies that failed to meet contractual obligations would
Fair of Technical Achievements Opened in Belgrade The 60th International Fair of Technique and Technical Achievements, whose exhibitors are announcing more than 100 innovations, kicked off at the Belgrade Fair grounds yesterday. The trade show is hosting over 500 exhibitors from 26 countries, spanning Europe, America, Africa and Asia. It will be open to visitors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. until Friday, May 20. Besides its own jubilee, it is marking 160
years since the birth of Nikola Tesla, the great scientist whose discoveries and vision changed the world forever. Several events, including exhibitions on the history of robotics, with an emphasis on the Belgrade School of Robotics, Tesla coil and other themes, and projects of the Serbian Association of Inventors, will be held as part of the celebration. The 60th Belgrade Technical Fair was opened by young mathematicians
Loan for Public Sector Reform Finance Minister Dusan Vujovic and World Bank (WB) Country Manager for Serbia Tony Verheijen signed a EUR 69 million results-based loan (USD 75 million) to support Serbia in improving efficiency in public sector employment and finances, Tanjug reports.
The approval of the Program for Results on Modernization and Optimization of Public Administration demonstrates the Bank's strong commitment to support ongoing reforms in Serbia's public sector. The Serbian government embarked on an ambitious administrative reform effort with the
launch in 2014 of the Public Administration Reform Strategy and the Action Plan for its implementation, the WB noted. "Along with improving business climate and restructuring of public companies, reforms in the public sector should clear the field for faster private sector development and new job creation, as well as ensure Serbia's readiness for EU accession," Verheijen said. "This program supports the establishment of a merit based public service system and an efficient public administration. It will contribute to better use of scarce fiscal resources in order to create space for investments in important infrastructure," he added. One unique feature of this engagement is that, for the first time, the World Bank and the EU are jointly financing a single government program, aligning EU Sector Budget Support and World Bank result-based financing.
who won the first prize at the recently held 33rd Balkan Mathematical Olympiad for secondary schools students in Tirana. The trade show is hosting a number of national exhibitions, presented by the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Austria, Croatia and Republika Srpska, and the Regional Chambers of Commerce of the Serbian cities of Pozarevac, Valjevo and Krusevac are putting on group shows.
Dinar Steady Against Euro The Serbian dinar stood where it was against the euro over the weekend, and the official middle exchange rate on Monday was RSD 122.69 for one euro, the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) said in a release. The national currency firmed against the common eurozone currency by 0.2 percent from a month ago, and weakened 1.9 percent y-o-y. The indicative dinar-versus-dollar exchange rate fell 0.5 percent to RSD 108.45 for one dollar last Friday. The dinar strengthened against the U.S. currency 0.6 percent against a month ago and fell 2.7 percent y-o-y. Since the beginning of the year, the NBS has sold EUR 725 million and purchased EUR 20 million in the interbank foreign exchange market to ease excessive daily volatility of the dinar.
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Europe Got Troublingly Short Memory Over Aleksandar Vucic
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The Serbian Prime Minister is saying all the right things to ease his country into the EU. But Vucic, who attended the Srebrenica memorial service last year, once said, "for every Serb killed, we will kill 100 Muslims"
n my archives, I have tens of thousands of pages of notes, clippings, documents and reports from the Middle East over 40 years. Some of those files also cover the Bosnian war. I have in front of me a dispatch I wrote 18 years ago, when I was in the Kosovo capital of Pristina - still part of old Serbia, still controlled by the thugs of the Serbian paramilitary police, and already partially controlled by the socalled Kosovo Liberation Army. Down from the Serbian capital of Belgrade on 18 June 1998 comes this rather suave, dangerous young man - I unkindly referred to "his baby face, thick lips and quick smile" - who tries to persuade us journalists that all dictator Slobodan Milosevic wants in Kosovo is peace, dialogue and human rights for everyone, including the 90 per cent Muslim Kosovar Albanian population. Not a word of Serbia's suppression of Kosovo's autonomy nine years earlier.
Good Justification Given that he was Milosovic's information minister, and not long before that the spokesman for Vojeslav Seselj, leader of the Serbian militia which ethnically cleansed much of Bosnia and who said that his men had graduated to "rusty shoehorns" in putting out Croat eyes, we didn't expect this dapper gent in his smart blue blazer with shiny buttons to say much about ethnic cleansing. Was the minister aware, I asked him, that large areas of Kosovo were under the control of armed Albanian separatists? "This is good justification for the presence of [Serbian] government forces on
By Robert Fisk The Independent
this territory," he replied. And there was no reason to use comparisons with Bosnia and - here we all held our breath - with "the vocabulary of the situation in Srebrenica." Ah yes, the problem of 'vocabulary' words like massacre, rape, pillage, the worst European war crime since 1945. That word "situation" came from Vucic's lips, a craven, pusillanimous expression for the execution of more than 8,000 Muslims into mass graves that followed the 1995 surrender of the UN 'safe haven' of Srebrenica to the Serb murderers. The "vocabulary of the situation in Srebrenica": here was the Serbian minister, less than three years after the slaughter, palming us off with this Blairite expression while lecturing us on civic duty, constitutional rights, patriotism and non-violence. When he mentioned Srebrenica, without the slightest emotion in the midst of his creamy propaganda, it was like finding a splinter of glass in a piece of chocolate, a little horror buried away amid the soft undergrowth of words. So why should we be surprised - again, less than three years after this chilling press conference in Pristina - to find the same tall, rather gangling but smart young man accompanying the monstrous Vojislav Seselj (under a veil of secrecy and in the company of Iraqi security agents) to Baghdad as a guest of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party? But now I must introduce you to this ambitious chap whose boss was housed
in one of Saddam's guest villas and who joined the Iraqi dictator in a joint condemnation of American aggression. Yes, the former Milosovic minister of information - who knew very well that Saddam had sent telegrams of mutual support to Milosovic at the height of the 1999 Kosovo war when the Serbs, under NATO air attack, were driving 200,000 Muslims out of Kosovo - is none other than the present-day Prime Minister of Serbia. That man is Aleksander Vucic, who wants to take Serbia into the EU and is thus loved by our EU mates in Brussels and who is now advised by - no drawing in of breath here, please - Tony Blair.
Major Breakthrough A safe pair of hands, then, greeted warmly in Downing Street and Brussels; not just a prodigal son, but a man whose decision to accept a compromise UN resolution on Kosovo -acknowledging a World Court ruling that Kosovo's independence declaration was legal - was embraced by our Brussels elite as a "major breakthrough". All of which will accelerate Belgrade's request for membership of the EU. Blessed are the Peacemakers. Vucic, of course, is doing all the right things. He now runs the Serbian Progressive Party, is heartily loathed by his old friend Seselj - who was cleared of war crimes in Bosnia after eight years of imprisonment at The Hague - and even turned up at the Srebrenica memorial service last year, where Bill Clinton rashly urged mourners to shake him by the hand. Vucic laid flowers at the cemetery. The Bosnian Muslims, however, had longer memories than the smoothies from the EU. They recalled a Vucic speech from the Bosnian war years - "For every Serb killed, we will kill 100 Muslims" - and they pelted him with stones and bottles. It was the same old problem: Vucic's difficulty, despite the flowers, was all about "the vocabulary of the situation in Srebrenica". Massacre, yes; genocide, no. Not to worry. Lord Blair himself - the guy who bombed Serbia for its 'cleansing' of the Muslims of Kosovo - is on hand to smooth the path to greatness of Aleksander Vucic as he leads his nation into the comity of European nations. With friends like these...
S e r b i a D a i l y, M a y 1 7 , 2 0 1 6
10
Ask Not From Whom the AK-47s Flow The answer is often Serbia, Croatia or Bulgaria
T
HE arsenal discovered in the apartment of Reda Kriket, a suspected terrorist arrested on March 24th near Paris, included explosives, Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles and a machine pistol from Croatia, writes The Economist. The terrorists who staged the attacks last November in Paris employed AK-47s made by Zastava, a Serbian manufacturer. The Kouachi brothers, who attacked the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo the previous January, used Kalashnikov ammunition made in Bosnia. Whatever else these terrorists may have shared, one thing they certainly had in common was a fondness for Balkan arms. The tendency of guns from the Balkans to show up in terrorist attacks in Europe is no surprise. The wars attending the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the near-collapse of the Albanian state in 1997, left a vast supply of small arms in the region. One study estimated the number of firearms in private hands in the Balkans at over 6m, most of them unregistered (see chart). Serbia has the highest concentration of private guns per head in Europe.
Arms Smuggling On a continent with strict gun laws, Balkan guns have been a blessing for organised crime, too. A study of 26 gang weapons seized in Marseille found nine were Kalashnikovs from the former Yugoslavia. French police report that Albanian gunrunners bring in 20 of the rifles at a time, concealed in the floors of vans. In 2014 Slovakian police stopped an entire lorry full of guns and grenades heading from Bosnia to Sweden. Yet such shipments into north-western Europe are the small-time "ant trade" of the region's arms industry, says Ivan Zverzhanovski, co-ordinator of SEESAC, an organisation working on small-arms control in the Balkans. The big customers are foreign governments-many
of them Western. In 2014 American, Australian, British and Canadian military cargo planes collected 22m rounds of Kalashnikov ammunition and other arms from Albania and delivered them to Kurdish Peshmerga forces fighting Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq. In that case the munitions were free: Albania donated them to earn political credit with Washington, says Evelyn Farkas, a former American defence official. But in most cases the contracts are lucrative. Many of the militias that Western countries back in the Middle East use weapons from the former communist bloc, especially the cheap, reliable, long-lasting AK-47. Since Western countries do not make them, Balkan sources come in handy. America has been buying crates of Kalashnikovs from Serbia's Zastava since the late 2000s, mainly for Iraqi and Afghan security forces.
Turning A Blind Eye Some of these guns leak into local bazaars, or are seized when militias capture government arsenals. A study by Armament Research Services (ARES) of ammunition used by IS in an area of Iraq in 2015 found that 17% of it came from the Balkans. Videos on social media show Syrian militias using
Croatian rifles-almost certainly among 10,000 supplied to Iraqi forces as part of a â‚Ź100m ($120m) deal in 2014-15. In 2012 Croatian arms bought by Saudi Arabia were flown to Jordan for distribution to Syrian rebels in a deal backed by the CIA. Although most of the Balkan arms business is above-board, some is not. Nonstate groups can get the "end-user certificates" needed for international deals through well-connected consultants, says one Serbian source. Another says militias in Yemen, which is under a UN arms embargo, are getting guns through buyers with end-user certificates from Persian Gulf states. Western countries that back the militias, the source says, "turn a blind eye". Bulgarian arms supposedly destined for the Gulf are turning up in Yemen, Libya and Sudan. Two decades after the Balkan wars ended, the region's arms trade does not seem to be slackening. On February 19th an American air strike on an IS base in Libya killed two Serbians associated with the country's embassy who had been kidnapped in November. Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian prime minister, said he would rather not discuss the reasons for the kidnapping. It was, he said, "related to certain weapons deals".
Police in Belgrade Seize Marijuana, Ecstasy, Cocaine The Serbian police yesterday arrested two suspects and seized 3.2 kilograms of marijuana in an apartment in New Belgrade, Tanjug reports. They also confiscated 4,565 ecstasy pills, five grams of cocaine, two electronic scales "with traces of cocaine,"
and EUR 1,620 and RSD 22,000 in cash, the Interior Ministry (MUP) said. According to a statement, the value of the seized narcotics - "packed and ready to be sold to users" - reaches RSD 6.5 million. The suspects have been named with
their initials and year of birth: A.J. (1993) and M.Dj (1988). Both were staying in the apartment without registering their place of residence, the MUP said. The suspects have been charged and brought before the Higher Public Prosecution in Belgrade.
S e r b i a D a i l y, M a y 1 7 , 2 0 1 6
11
Belgrade Pastry Shop Guards Grandpa's Secrets The Pelivan pastry shop has been around for 164 years, surviving wars and regime change - but don't ask them for the recipe of grandfather's Azir's prized ice cream "The three of us have always been under pressure, as we know we can't close the family business down and we know it has to be the priority," Musab AlShukeir, the youngest of the three brothers, says. Every generation in this family has entrusted the next with the care of the 164-year-old Pelivan pastry shop, the 22-year-old political science student explains. "That is our duty now, too." Al-Shukeir doesn't intend to join the family business himself. His elder brothers will continue the tradition, while he plans to pursue a career in journalism or politics. "This is a family tradition and I will always be here. But I have found my path in other matters," Al-Shukeir admits. While we are sitting in the packed shop, whose walls are covered with photographs of Belgrade, the youngest member of the Al-family recalls that the "Pelivan" can trace its history all the way back to 1851. In those days, it was located close to the Albania palace on Terazije. It stayed there until April 6, 1941, when the pastry shop - like almost all the surrounding buildings - perished in the Nazi bombing of Belgrade.
Original Recipes "At that time, grandfather Azir was working together with his cousin. But when the war broke out, his cousin left the country, while Azir moved the shop to where we are now, at Bulevar Kralja
By Ivana Nikolic BIRN
Aleksandra 20," Al-Shukeir explains. Over all these years, the original recipes have mostly stayed the same, although more pastries have been added to great-grandfather Mustafa's collection. It all started with great-great-grandfather Mustafa, a wrestler who opened Pelivan from the money he won as a prize in a wrestling tournament. Mustafa was a member of the Goranci community, who have lived in the mountains of southern Kosovo for centuries. Their origins remain unknown but they are thought to be ethnic Slavs who converted to Islam under the Ottoman Empire, retaining the Serbian language but adopting the Muslim faith. The pastry shop passed to Mustafa's son, Mehmed, and from Mehmed to AlShukeir's grandfather, Azir, and later on to his mother. The true specialty here is the ice cream, which the young student says his grandfather perfected. Decades on, the three brothers jealously guard the recipe. "We have his notebook in which he dismissed 30 to 40 recipes until he finally found the one that satisfied him, which we still use," Al-Shukeir notes proudly. In 1979, their mother married a Syrian who had come to Yugoslavia to study medicine. "He never finished his studies. He stayed here and ran the business
from 1994, which is when our grandfather died, until 2011, when the three of us took over," Al-Shukeir recalls. Their father is now back in Syria, where he has been caught up in Syria's terrible civil war. "We are worried but we talk to him every second day. Hopefully he will come back," Al-Shukeir says. Over coffee, Al-Shukeir talks about all the sweets that his family makes in the pastry shop. Clients come and go - it seems that this place is never actually empty. Based on what his grandson recalls, Azir was the most important figure in the family. As Al-Shukeir explains, his grandfather even supplied treats for the Yugoslav royal family, the Karadjordjevics, providing the court with halvah. The business survived Yugoslavia's dramatic transition from centralized monarchy to Communist federation unharmed. Indeed, Yugoslavia's long time Communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, seems to have been partial to the family cookies.
Economic Troubles "No one ever made problems for grandfather, neither the monarchists nor the Communists," Al-Shukeir notes. Problems only occurred when Yugoslavia broke up into its component units and anti-Albanian sentiment surged in what was now the Republic of Serbia. Some people saw the Muslim Goranis as Albanians, and targeted them as a separatist war began to rage in the late 1990s in mainly Albanian Kosovo - then a province of Serbia. During the protests against Slobodan Milosevic's regime, "someone threw a stone at our shop window. I don't think it was aimed at our origins; such things were happening all over the city at that time," Al-Shukeir says, adding the family has never felt any kind of discrimination. On the contrary, Belgraders love their products and many clients have been coming here for decades. Still, business is not that good - far worse than during Pelivan's golden age, from the 1940s to the start of the economic crisis in Yugoslavia in 1981. The economic troubles afflicting Serbia today are affecting trade. "You cannot get rich from this job, but closing it down would be a huge loss. We are staying here," Al-Shukeir concludes.
TODAY IN THEATRES CASANOVA AGAINST DON JUAN
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