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CITIZENSHIP IN THE MIDDLE EAST: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS AND THE ROLE OF MIDDLE EAST CITIZENSHIP ASSEMBLY (MECA)

ENGLISH

A wall is coming down at last
July 21, 2009

A visa queue outside the Austrian embassy in Sarajevo

The importance of visa free travel for the people of the Balkans has been a constant theme of our work for years. It also runs like a red thread through all the films of our Balkan series Return to Europe.

The motto of the first trailer of the series is "No Balkan Ghetto – It depends on us!" In the film on Albania, young activists destroy a symbolic Schengen Wall. The film on Bosnia concludes with citizens waiting in the rain outside the Austrian embassy in Sarajevo and with a young musician venting his anger: "Only Europe knows why this is this way."

It is no surprise, therefore, that the recent European Commission proposal – suggesting visa-free travel for Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbs from early 2010, leaving Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina on the Schengen Black List, and placing Kosovo on it for the first time – is a serious disappointment for Bosnians, Albanians and Kosovars.

Is this, some of our friends ask, a reflection of anti-Muslim prejudice? Is it not immoral to deny relatives of Srebrenica victims the ability of travel freely? Some even question why "Serbs" should enjoy this right when "Serb victims" – Bosniaks and Albanians – will not.

ESI rejects this logic. First, because it suggests that those who have suffered deserve visa-free travel more than those who have not. Second, because it does not actually address the concerns that have led to the Schengen wall being built in the first place.

There was, after all, a moral case for letting Bosnian citizens travel to the EU without a visa already in 1995 (citizens of neighbouring Croatia never needed one)! There was a moral case for Kosovars, having survived a decade of apartheid, to travel visa-free at least since 1999. Or for Serbs, having toppled Milosevic in 2000. Or for Macedonians, having implemented the Ohrid Agreement and having created a multiethnic society, at least since 2002. (Is the absence of a comparable turning point the reason why Albania is often – unfairly – forgotten?)

However, arguing for visa-free travel based mainly on political morality convinced only those already convinced. More than a decade of such arguments did not deliver results. The wall stood.

Then something changed: the logic of the debate.

Two year ago some focused on the security advantages to the EU of getting rid of the visa requirements. Giuliano Amato, long-time interior minister of Italy, made the argument at an ESI meeting in early 2009: rather than imposing visa requirements, he said, EU interior ministers would prefer having better functioning police cooperation. This requires reforms in local law enforcement: meeting the conditions of the EU roadmaps.

The new logic was "strict but fair": the EU offers the region a deal with strict conditions; the region responds; and the result is a win-win alliance to improve security and mobility.

It has worked extremely well. Note that the roadmap process only started last year! As a result of the work by the Commission and serious efforts by regional leaders, 11 million Balkan citizens are about to be able to travel to the EU visa-free: another 8 million could be able to do so within a year.

Now the citizens of Bosnia and Albania need to put pressure on their governments to make sure they complete roadmap implementation. The European Commission needs to ensure that its assessments are transparent and not influenced by prejudice.

So far, this is working. We believe it will continue to produce results.
 

Giuliano Amato and Otto Schily (Istanbul ESI White List meeting, July 2009)

A visa roadmap for Kosovo

There is only one serious problem in the Commission proposal: the absence of any process of "strict but fair" conditionality for the two million people of Kosovo.

The ESI White List project advisory board, led by Giuliano Amato and Otto Schily, welcomed the recent Commission proposal in an open letter "A Roadmap for Kosovo!", but noted:
 

"... we are disturbed by the fact that Kosovo has been left out of this process, a blanket visa requirement having been proposed for all of its residents, including those with Serbian citizenship – this, without any mention of a process that could possibly lead to this requirement being lifted.

.... Kosovo should also receive a visa roadmap. It must be given the opportunity to implement the same far-reaching reforms that the other five Balkan countries have set out to implement and to thus contribute to its own security, as well as to that of the entire region and the whole EU. Once Kosovo meets these conditions, the visa requirement should be abolished."

Amato, Schily and others reject the argument that all 27 EU member states have to recognise Kosovo's independence before another step can be taken:

"If Kosovo can be placed on the visa "black list" without an EU consensus on its status, then it can also be placed on the "white list" once it meets the necessary technical requirements. The visa liberalisation process should be considered status neutral by the EU."

A group of Kosovo's leading civil society representatives, Kosovo Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, makes a similar point:

"We are aware that EU member states disagree over the status of Kosovo. Indeed, the signatories of this letter also have different views on this subject.

However, we can all agree that leaving Kosovo residents, whatever their ethnicity, trapped in a visa ghetto, when all other Balkan people from the Adriatic to the Black Sea are able to travel freely, would be a disastrous policy."
 

Zenun Pajaziti	Vilson Mirdita

Zenun Pajaziti, Minister of Internal Affairs of Kosovo, told ESI in an exclusive interview two days ago:

"We are surprised. We cannot understand why the EU - which is divided on Kosovo status as we all know - can agree to put Kosovo on the Black Schengen list, but cannot agree to offer us a roadmap of conditions to meet in order to get to the White List, like all other countries in the region. This looks like discrimination against the citizens of Kosovo."

And Vilson Mirdita, Kosovo's Charge d'Affaires in Berlin, told ESI:

"The process has to start, now! If it does not I am afraid that Kosovo could fall behind the rest of the region, and that consequently people might feel compelled to fall back on clandestine solutions to travel to the EU."

The proposal by the Commission must not be the last word on the matter this year. There is time for EU countries to amend the Commission proposal before they adopt it. To leave things as they are would be a lose-lose situation for Kosovo, the region, and the EU.
 

Europe 1999 – 2009 – 2019
 

ESI 10th anniversary	Kristof Bender (ESI Vienna)

On 12 July 2009, ESI celebrated its 10th anniversary in Istanbul with a seminar on the state of democracy in the wider Europe - and on the role of think tanks in this new environment.

At the outset we looked at four maps: the EU in 1999 (when we first set up ESI in a cafe in Sarajevo); the EU in 2009; an enlarged EU in 2019 (having fulfilled its promises to current EU candidates/potential candidates); and the new European neighbourhood, between an enlarged EU and Russia.
 

the EU in 1999	the EU in 2009

the EU in 2019	our contested neighbourhood

What will it take for the EU to be as successful in promoting democracy, prosperity and stability in the coming decade as it has been in the most recent one? How to make the next enlargement a success... and how to stabilise the new neighbourhood?
At our event Michael Thumann and Amberin Zaman, correspondents for Die Zeit and The Economist, respectively, explored Turkey's ongoing democratisation. (For an update on Turkey's trial of the century, the Ergenekon case, see the recent Rumeli Observer entry).
Nicu Popescu presented the latest ECFR report on the European neighbourhood.
ESI Causasus analyst Arzu Geybullayeva spoke about challenges to democracy in Azerbaijan (for more – and for recent developments – see her blog Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines).
ESI analysts Kristof Bender, Besa Shahini, Verena Knaus and Alex Stiglmayer spoke about the challenges facing enlargement in the Balkans (for this and more, visit our new ESI enlargement section – the Great Debate on Europe's borders – set to expand significantly in coming months with the support of the Austrian Erste Stiftung).
The Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus and the future of enlargement have been and will remain the focus of our work in coming years.
For all of you who have accompanied us on our journey these past 10 years, be it as readers, donors or friends, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude.

Best regards,


Gerald Knaus
 

Rumeli Observer (Istanbul)	Ivane (ESI Tbilisi) and Arzu (ESI Baku)

Further reading

• NEW – Amato, Schily, Glenny, Krastev, Grabbe et alia – A Visa Roadmap for Kosovo 
• NEW – Kosovo Civil Society – Appeal to EU parliamentarians and politicians  
• New – ESI Visa Implementation Grade Reports
• NEW – ESI EU enlargement section
• NEW – Rumeli Observer – Is the EU Visa Proposal Anti-Muslim?  
• NEW – Rumeli Observer – Justice and the Military in Turkey – an Update
• NEW – Rumeli Observer – Where new ideas are born – ESI 10th anniversary Story

Feedback

As always, we are looking forward to your feedback. However, please do not reply directly to this message but send your comments to feedback@esiweb.org.

Contact

European Stability Initiative (ESI)
Grossbeerenstrasse 83
10963 Berlin
GERMANY

Tel: +49 30 53214455
Fax: +49 30 53214457
E-mail: info@esiweb.org

Website: www.esiweb.org

© European Stability Initiative (ESI)

 

ENGLISH

EU Visa Plan Leaves Bosnia 'Isolated'

Srecko Latal

EU offered visa-free roadmap to the Balkan non EU countries

Sarajevo, 16 July 2009 - Bosnian and many European officials have condemned the European Commission's proposed visa-liberalization plan for the Balkans as discriminatory against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and potentially destabilizing for entire region.

“Bosnia and Herzegovina remains on the black list. People are in the ghetto because of visas,” reads the top news headline in the Mostar daily Dnevni List. “Bosniaks are isolated,” read the title of a front-page article in Sarajevo daily San on Thursday.

The visa-liberalization program for the Western Balkans, which was presented at a press conference on Wednesday, recommends a visa-free regime for Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, but excludes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. This plan has triggered b and mixed reactions both in the region and across Europe.

Citizens and officials in Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia welcomed the announcement. Yet the plan has been harshly criticized by citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo as well as by some European politicians and human rights activists.

“The visa policy for the successor states of the former Yugoslavia risks to create two classes of citizens in South Eastern Europe, based on ethnicity,” reads a petition which started circling across Europe on Wednesday afternoon, and which has so far been signed by a veteran German diplomat and politician and former High representative to Bosnia, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, European parliamentary deputies Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Doris Pack, human rights activist Tilman Zülch, and scores of others.

Dialogue on visas started with Western Balkans countries in 2006, while the visa liberalization process was launched in 2008. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania are deemed to have not fulfilled the necessary conditions but could hope to join the rest of the region by mid-2010 if all requirements are fulfilled, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said at the press conference.

While visa-liberalization to Macedonia and Montenegro was not questioned, some observers feel that the EU’s decision to offer a visa-free regime to Serbia was largely motivated by political reasons.

In a recent paper, Tobias Heider of the Free University Berlin said: "The Commission’s recommendation itself is politically motivated because the assessment of Serbia’s readiness follows a foreign policy rationale. EU Foreign Affairs Ministers communicated to Serbia prior to the last Parliamentary elections in May 2008 that they will reward a pro-European vote with a visa free regime. This incentive was, for foreign policy reasons, the right thing to do."

"For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Commission argues that many technical requirements have not been met so far. Experts agree that in legislative, administrative and technical terms the gap between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is rather narrow," Heider wrote.
Furthermore, leaving Bosnia out of the process creates a dangerous precedent and potential long-term destabilizing effect for all of Europe, some experts and officials have suggested. Since most Bosnian Croats already have Croatian passports and since Bosnian Serbs can legally obtain Serbian passports – thanks to a controversial law Serbia adopted in the middle of visa-free negotiations – the no-visa regime would essentially affect only Bosniaks.
“The draft recommendation on visa liberalization will increase tensions within the fragile post-war societies as the plans of the Commission will formalize ethnic divisions and provide them with dubious legitimacy,” reads the international petition.

“Only a part of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina will profit from the new travel regime. ... Restrictions thus remain in place for the Bosniak people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. De facto, ethnic criteria will decide whether a citizen is able to travel freely to the EU,” it added.

“For the first time since 1945 one non-Christian community is being isolated from Europe because of its religious belonging. Once this group was European Jews, now it is Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Tilman Zulch, head of an independent human rights organization Society for Threatened Peoples told local media.

EU Enlargement and Justice and Home Affairs Commissioners Olli Rehn and Jacques Barrot, who have presented the recommendations in Brussels on Wednesday, downplayed the decision for the Bosnian public.

“We believe that Bosnia and Herzegovina will soon catch up with the neighbors,” they said in an article in the Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz.

Dnevni Avaz bly criticized Bosnian and especially Bosniak leaders for remaining silent and accepting the European Commission’s decision.

 

ENGLISH"#FF6600"> ENGLISH

EU Visa Policy Might Create Muslim Ghetto

Tirana, 14 July 2009

EC

The Young European Federalist Movement, JEF, has criticized the EU visa liberalisation policy towards the Western Balkans, arguing that it could potentially create new divisions and anti-EU sentiments by leaving out Muslim minorities.

The European Commission will ask the EU Council this week to offer visa-free travel to citizens of Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia.

Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn is due to officially present the proposal in Strasbourg on Tuesday, and if all conditions are met, visa-free travel will be possible as of January 1.

Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania started the process to obtain visa-free travel to Europe early in 2008.  

However, Albania and Bosnia have been ranked at the end of the list and therefore will not be included in the first round of visa liberalization. According to EC sources, they will have to wait until the end of 2010 at the earliest. Likewise, Kosovo will not be included in the first wave of the visa liberalisation process.
 
“It is important that the Commission considers the implications if Bosnia and Herzegovina is left out of this process, consequently leaving Bosniaks [Bosnian Muslims] as the only inhabitants of BiH without the ability to travel without visa limitations,” Peter Matjasic, JEF’s General Secretary, said in a statement. 

Activists note that the EU Commission’s new visa regime will contribute to further ethnic separation on a formal level as Muslim Bosniaks, in contrast to Bosnian Serbs and Croats do not have the possibility of dual citizenship with a second country that may soon enjoy visa liberalisation. Bosnian Croats frequently hold dual Bosnian and Croatian citizenship, while some Bosnian Serbs hold Bosnian and Serbian passports.

“This means that the new EU visa policy will only, and formally, exclude and discriminate one part of Bosnia’s population,” said JEF. “Additionally, this will happen on ethnic grounds, thus playing into the hands of nationalists,” it added.

Residents of Kosovo will also remain excluded from the lift of visa restrictions because of diverging positions on Kosovo’s legal status. The decision to delay visa liberalisation procedures has also created resentment in Albania, which has the highest visa rejection rate in Europe.

 

ENGLISH

Visa Conditions in the Balkans

Our publications concerning the European debate on visa-free travel for Balkan countries have already attracted a great deal of media attention. Then a recent ESI report – EU Scorecard - Which Balkan countries deserve visa-free travel (22 May) – suddenly found itself thrust into the political fray during the current parliamentary election campaign in Albania. Elections will take place this coming Sunday.

In a televised debate on TV Klan, Majlinda Bregu, Minister of European Integration from the governing Democratic Party, accused Ditmir Bushati, a Socialist Party candidate, of passing off the ESI report as the conclusions of the European Commission. Holding the ESI report before the cameras, she accused Bushati himself of being the real source behind the conclusion that Albania was failing to meet the EU's conditions for visa-free travel. In fact, the ESI analysis was based entirely on European Commission assessments – all available on our website.

The fact of the matter is that Albania, together with Bosnia-Herzegovina, has fallen behind the rest of the Balkans in the pursuit of visa-free travel – a goal to which both parties in Sunday's election are firmly committed. However, the news is not all bad. Our analysis is that, with a sustained effort from the next government, the gap could be closed within a year.

Majlinda Bregu	Ditmir Bushati

Grading Progress on Meeting Visa Conditions in the Balkans

That visa free travel for Western Balkan citizens to the EU in 2010 appears within reach is also due to the efforts of the Czech EU presidency. Identifying which countries currently deserve it is the purpose behind the five ESI Visa Grade Reports posted on our website today.

These five Grade Reports are based on the most detailed comparative assessment of progress in each Balkan country ever done, drawing on all the Commission assessments and EU expert mission reports submitted in recent months. They show in detail how much the countries of the region have done against each of the 42 benchmarks. They also highlight what remains outstanding. See here for our detailed assessment of progress in Albania.

The ESI Grade Reports reveal that the European Commission is fully justified in proposing to offer visa-free travel to Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia (conditional on further progress in the coming months in Montenegro and Serbia) by the end of 2009.

They also show that, while Albania is indeed behind the other three countries, the gap could be bridged within a year of sustained effort. In fact, no other country has been judged as harshly by the European Commission as Albania! While the European Commission found Albania to be far behind Serbia and Montenegro in each of the four major reform areas (do cument security; illegal migration; public security; fundamental rights)gour detailed assessment of the 42 specific conditions shows that the gap – while real – is actually much narrower. At this point, examining all 42 detailed conditions, Albania is also much more advanced than Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In the coming weeks, we will post all our detailed assessments of conditions in all 5 countries of the region on our website. We will also describe how the EU visa process demonstrates the remarkable 'soft power' of the EU pre-accession process to bring about real reforms, when applied in a manner that is both strict and fair.

The coming year will show whether the EU is willing to apply these principles also to Albania.

Albania's image in Europe

It was 1996. An English journalist was sitting in Tirana, watching Wimbledon on television in his hotel room with an Albanian friend.

"Confronted with two tennis players and the serried ranks of smartly dressed spectators in faraway London, I now felt that same force of shock. It was so ordered, so formal, so regulated and well behaved, so improbable. How could you ever get human beings to comport themselves in such an impeccable fashion? It didn't speak of money, but of rules voluntarily obeyed, reasonable laws formulated by intelligent, civilised people with the good of the community at heart, of trust, compromise, safety and peaceful coexistence. Everything Albania wasn't, in fact."

(Robert Carver, The Accursed Mountains)



The idea that Albania is somehow un-European – Europe's own Heart of Darkness – has only recently begun to fade. It is high time. Albania has undergone a tremendous transformation in the past decade, all the more striking given its horrific legacies and traumatic early years of transition.

Our recent documentary film, Albanian Renaissance, shot in summer 2007 described Albania's economic recovery, the transformation of Tirana and the innovative civil society organisations that are building a new tradition of creative, non-violent protest. The documentary is available online in English.

Since filming that documentary, the country has continued to move forward. On 1 April 2009, Albania joined NATO and on 28 April Albania submitted its official application to become a candidate for EU accession. Some of the people we portrayed in 2007 have entered politics and will stand for election this Sunday: Elisa Spiropali, then a young leader of the NGO Mjaft, is now a parliamentary candidate for Edi Rama's Socialist Party. Erion Veliaj and Arbjan Mazniku created the political movement G99 and are now running for parliament (in 2008, Erion joined us for six months as an ESI analyst, under taking research on the economic transformation of Timisoara).

This weekend, 13 years after scenes from Wimbledon inspired Carver's dark musings on civilisation and anarchy; Albanians have a chance to show the world just how far their country has progressed. Albania's friends abroad will be hoping that this time the voting will not be marred by irregularities, and that it will produce a clear and uncontested mandate for the next government.

Albania – Then and now

Despite recent progress, an uphill battle …

The challenges facing Albania after these elections are formidable. The country remains one of the poorest in Europe; the average Albanian is po e citizen of Peru or Namibia. Albania's GDP per capita in 2008 (US$4,095) is less than half of Turkey's (US$10,472), a quarter of Croatia's (US$15,628) and less than a tenth of Germany's (US$44,660). The only Europeans poorer than Albanians are Ukrainians, Armenians, Georgians, Kosovars and Moldovans (IMF 2008).

While the Albanian economy has been growing at a rate of above 5% per year from 2003 to 2008, it is now threatened by the global economic crisis. In 2007, according to UNCTAD, the total stock of FDI (i.e. the value of all assets owned by foreigners) in Albania with over 3 million people was much lower than in Montenegro, a much smaller country (650,000) with similar resources and geography. Even during Albania's period of growth, companies have struggled to become competitive: a recent competitiveness survey (2008/2009) puts Albania in 108th place behind Moldova, Pakistan, Ghana and Bosnia-Herzegovina and, according to the World Economic Forum ranking (2008/2009), the least competitive economy in Europe.

Albanian companies struggle to produce goods that can compete in external markets. Albanian exports amounted to an estimated US$1.4 billion in 2008. Tiny Estonia (1.3 million people), by comparison, exported more than US$13 billion. Albania's exports are less than a third of neighbouring Macedonia's, half of Georgia's and barely higher than Armenia's, a landlocked country with few natural resources and two closed borders (with Turkey and Azerbaijan).

As a result, Albania suffers from a serious unemployment problem. While the number of job seekers continues to grow, swelled by an additional 45,000 young people entering the labour market each year, only 6-7,000 new jobs are created each year (based on 2001-2008 data from the State Statistical Office INSAT).

In short: while Albania has travelled far from the turbulent days of the 1990s, it remains isolated and trapped in poverty. Whoever wins the elections this Sunday will face an uphill struggle to bring about the peaceful revolution of Albanian society that will be required to turn this around.

Best regards ,



Gerald Knaus


Further reading
 

• Who is behind ESI and what do we really want?
• Albania Documentary – Albanian Renaissance
• ESI on the 2009 Swedish EU presidency
• ESI Op-ed on Visa Issue in EUObserver
• ESI Visa Grade Reports
• Rumeli Observer (blog): Visa and the Czechs
• ESI Turkey Film Screening in Berlin – 30 June (in German)
• ESI's major donors: Erste Stiftung – Bosch Foundation – OSI

Feedback

As always, we are looking forward to your feedback. However, please do not reply directly to this message but send your comments to feedback@esiweb.org.

Contact

European Stability Initiative (ESI)
Grossbeerenstrasse 83
10963 Berlin
GERMANY

Tel: +49 30 53214455
Fax: +49 30 53214457
E-mail: info@esiweb.org
Website: www.esiweb.org

© European Stability Initiative (ESI)

ENGLISH

'Happy Birthday, Mr President Karadžić'

19 June 2009
The Serbian National Movement, based in Banja Luka, Bosnia, has put up posters in nine cities across Bosnia and Herzegovina, wishing war crimes suspect Radovan Karadžić a happy birthday.

BIRN's Justice Report has learnt that the posters, featuring Radovan Karadžić’s picture and “Happy birthday, President!”, appeared in Bosanski Novi, Prijedor, Gradiska, Banja Luka, Doboj, Brcko, Bijeljina, Vlasenica and Pale.

Members of the Serbian National Movement Izbor je Nas (The Choice is Ours), are behind the campaign.

Justice Report has discovered that the posters in Banja Luka and Bijeljina downtown area have already been removed. The ones in Brcko are expected to be removed soon.

Halid Emkic, spokesperson of the Brcko district police, said: “The team has taken the measures and actions in order to document the incident. The prosecutor has been informed about it. Measures will be taken to remove the posters.”
Tijana Savic, spokesperson for the RS Police, said police had received a report on some posters having been put up in Bijeljina only.

“The prosecution claims that there is no evidence of a criminal act and the posters have been removed,” Savic said.

Dane Cankovic, the movement's president, told Justice Report: “In this way we are showing that we have not forgotten the person who deserves the credit for establishment of Republika Srpska and defence of the Serbian people. We have undertaken this action in order to show that we have not forgotten him. We wished him a happy birthday, which is a civilised act. We are hoping that Radovan Karadžić will be glad to see this.”
 
Karadžić, the first President of Republika Srpska and Supreme Commander of the RS Armed Forces, has been charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of laws and practices of warfare. After having been on the run for years, he was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008. His trial is expected to begin at The Hague in the coming months.

 “Radovan Karadžić is a political visionary, humanist and peacemaker. He fights for the truth. So, help us God, the Hague Tribunal will render a verdict of not guilty after it sees the evidence he presents,” Cankovic said

Karadžić was born on June 19, 1945, in the village of Petnjica, in Montenegro.

(Report by BIRN - Justice Report. www.bim.ba)

 

ENGLISH

Video Shows Fugitive Mladic Moving Freely

Sarajevo | 11 June 2009 |

Ratko Mladic

Bosnian Federal Television, FTV, has aired video footage of  war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, showing him moving about freely, well after the Hague indictment against him.






The video footage, discovered during various raids on the homes of Mladic's wife and son by Serbian authorities, were handed over the the prosecution at the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, Dusan Ignjatovic, director of the Serbian office for cooperation with The Hague, told Balkan Insight and the BIRN Justice Report.



Ignjatovic would not reveal the details about where and when the videos were found, but said his office would hold a press conference later today in Belgrade on the issue.

FTV's "60 minutes" political talk show last night aired several amateur videos featuring Mladic and his family, showing Mladic attending the funeral of his daughter Ana, who committed suicide in 1994, celebrating the birth of his grandchild and at his son Darko's wedding. In the videos, Mladic is accompanied by his wife, Bosiljka, who lives in Belgrade. Her apartment was been raided several times, as has her son's apartment.

The wedding video shows Mladic and his wife dancing to the live music of Sarajevo pop band Plavi Orkestar - a favorite among the older generations of the former Yugoslavia, especially in Sarajevo, which was kept under siege for more than three and a half years by Mladic's forces.  

In most of the footage, Mladic is surrounded by many people, with strangers approaching him to take photographs with him. Some of the footage was filmed in Bosnia and some in military baracks in Serbia, according to the show's host, Bakir Hadziomerovic.

There is one segment of footage that shows Mladic attending the wedding of one of his bodyguards, apparently in 2000, in the Eastern Sarajevo suburb of Kula. In the footage, the cars driving by have new Bosnian license plates issued in 1998 and beyond. Another video shows a clearly older Mladic hiding what appears to be a cane behind his back.

Speaking to Balkan Insight, the talk show's main journalist, Damir Kaletovic, said that aside from the video of Mladic attending his daughter's funeral in 1994, most of the footage was shot after the end of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, and after the indictment against him by the ICTY.

On the show, Hadziomerovic said the “clips show everything, covering a long period of over ten years", including footage believed to have been shot some time between 2006 and 2008.

Ignjatovic told Belgrade's daily B92 that the footage was being analyzed, but he suspected it had not been shot as recently as 2008.

"What’s most important in the whole story is that we have footage of that war criminal’s stay in military facilities in Serbia, in Topcider and elsewhere,” he said.

Kaletovic said "60 Minutes" obtained the videos from foreign intelligence sources, the identities of which could not be revealed.

While most media has focused on the 2008 reference to some of the Mladic video footage, "60 Minutes" made it clear that the footage could have been from 2006. Most statements, as such, have been in reaction to this year, distorting the story.

At a press conference in Brussels, the BBC asked Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn about the footage, and both responded that they did not believe it could have been filmed as recently as last year.

"I have serious doubts about the 2008 reference," Jeremic was quoted as saying. "2008 was a year when these pictures could not have taken place. I'm not talking about the previous times, but what I can say is that this government in Serbia is fully committed to completing the process of cooperating with the Hague Tribunal."

Rehn agreed, but said that he was in "regular contact with intelligence services and with the ICTY itself, and the latest assumptions about Mladic's whereabouts is from spring 2006".

Rasim Ljajic, head of Serbia's council for cooperation with Hague Tribunal, was more definitive. He told local media that none of the footage aired on FTV was less than eight years old and that Serbia had handed over all evidence pertaining to Mladic to the ICTY.

"I cannot confirm that this data is from The Hague, and Serbia certainly didn't hand it over. We have handed all material evidence over to the Hague Tribunal, and in discussions with The Hague we must determine how this material made its way to the media.We're not accusing anyone, but this is too big of a coincidence," he was quoted as saying.

"I’m concerned that the purpose of airing the footage is to prevent a change in Holland’s stance on visa liberalization and to return Serbia to the bench to defend ourselves against accusations that we are have not done everything possible to finalize cooperation with the Hague Tribunal," he said.

“It is clear that someone in the international community does not have the best intentions” with regard to Serbia’s bid to join the EU.

Mladic is indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, for genocide committed in ten Bosnian cities, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.

He was first indicted together with wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić on 25 June 1995. The amended indictment was filed in November the same year, and the most recent one in November 2002. In the last indictment, Mladic's case is separate from that of Karadžić.

Karadžić was arrested last July in Belgrade after years of hiding. When apprehended, he was operating under the false identity of Dragan Dabic and working as an alternative medicine practitioner. According to reports, Karadžić, though a fugitive from the ICTY, had been living and moving around freely in Belgrade.

Throughout, Serbian authorities have insisted that they do no know the whereabouts of Mladic. Former Hague chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, until very end of her mandate, was convinced that Mladic was hiding in Serbia.

In the lastest report to UN Security Council, ICTY chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz noted that while Serbia had made "additional progress in its cooperation" with the court, "the search for and arrest of Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic " remained "the central issue in relation to Serbia’s cooperation".
 

English

Bosnian Serbs, OHR Engage in “New War”
Sarajevo | 01 June 2009 | Srecko Latal

Valentin InzkoPoliticians in Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska have started a new war with the top western envoy in the country, refusing his calls to stop challenging the country’s constitution.

Despite stark warnings from the head of Bosnia’s Office of the High Representative, OHR, Valentin Inzko, Bosnian Serb parties have refused to withdraw their recent decision to challenge all competencies which were over the past years transferred to the state level.

Following his highly critical report to the UN Security Council late last week, Inzko has sent a letter to the Bosnian Serb leadership giving them until June 11 to reverse their decision or face consequences, local media and the OHR confirmed over the weekend.

“I know what to do with Bonn [governing] powers,” Inzko warned in an interview with local media, referring to the High Representative's sweeping powers to make decisions and hire and fire elected officials.

The row erupted on May 14 when the Assembly of Republika Srpska adopted a set of highly disputed conclusions, including a decision to reassess and reclaim a number of competencies which have been in the past years transferred from entity to state level by order of the High Representative.

Bosnian Serb leaders also demanded that Inzko stop using his so-called Bonn Powers that allow the High Representative to impose laws and remove recalcitrant politicians. Inzko was also urged to reinstate all previously sacked politicians.

This set of conclusions was seen as the climax of the Bosnian Serbs’ months-long policy of hostility towards further administrative reforms. It was also seen as a blatant challenge to the OHR, as well as to renewed US and EU efforts in Bosnia.

During a visit to Sarajevo two weeks ago, US Vice President Joseph Biden criticized Bosnian Serb policies.


Bosnian Serb attempts to challenge the transfer of competencies from entity to state were also a part of a highly critical report submitted last Thursday by Inzko at the UN Security Council in New York.

“Notwithstanding the positive achievements that have been made, divisive rhetoric and official resolutions challenging the sovereignty, constitutional order and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina all continued during the reporting period, principally on the part of Republika Srpska,” Inzko said in his report.

He said that Republika Srpska institutions and officials had been “in the forefront of attacks on the legitimacy of state institutions … and in the forefront of efforts to reverse previous state-building and EU-mandated reforms.”

Inzko stressed that this was happening “at a time when the State Investigation and Protection Agency [SIPA] has submitted a preliminary report to the State Prosecutor on possible financial wrong-doings by the r>
Following Inzko’s address to the UN Security Council, the international community continued building pressure on Bosnian Serb leaders. Inzko as well as the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy chief Javier Solana have sent letters to Bosnian Serb leaders urging them to stop challenging the constitution and blocking reforms.

US Ambassador to Bosnia Charles English also chimed in, stressing that Inzko enjoyed full American support.

Even usually pro-Serbian Russia this time around avoided openly standing by the Bosnian Serb leadership.

But while Bosnian Serb leaders appeared to be more muted and conciliatory in their statements, they refused the western request.

“There are questions which we have to jointly resolve and we have to put an end to these exchanges about who owns what and how,” Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik told media over the weekend.

“There are no adventurists in Republika Srpska who would engage in activities that would lead to instabilities,” Dodik added, indicating that the disputed Republika Srpska Assembly’s resolution represented merely a political platform rather than an indication of some future unilateral action.

He also complained about the tone of Inzko’s letter, saying it indicated a return to the OHR’s past policies of impositions and sanctions.

Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social democrats, SNSD, as well as most other predominately Bosnian Serb parties rejected Inzko’s request, saying they had never violated Bosnia’s constitution.

Yet Inzko was resolute. In his letter, he demanded that the Republika Srpska Assembly annul its May 14 resolution before June 11. After that date, Inzko said he would “decide about his next actions.”

The exchanges between the Bosnian Serb leadership and Inzko over the weekend indicate that the honeymoon is over for Bosnia’s new High Representative, who is, after only two months of his new mandate, approaching the first real showdown with Dodik.

A similar showdown ended poorly for the previous High Representative, Miroslav Lajcak, after Dodik saw through his bluff. Learning from Lajcak’s mistakes, Inzko has from the very beginning of his mandate worked to build b international support for his actions - support that could, however, be seriously challenged if Dodik refuses to back down.
 

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