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OMRI Daily Digest II, No. 241, 13 December 1995
CONTENTS
[1] BOSNIA CONFERENCE OPENS NEAR PARIS.
[2] BOSNIAN FEDERATION ASSEMBLY BACKS DAYTON ACCORD.
[3] CROATIAN OPPOSITION FAILS TO BLOCK GOVERNMENT OVER DAYTON.
[4] SERBIAN PRESIDENT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT PEACE PROSPECTS.
[5] ROMANIAN CONTRIBUTION TO NATO FORCE IN BOSNIA.
[6] DNIESTER TEACHERS, LAWYERS STRIKE.
[7] "THE TSAR IS COMING."
[8] BULGARIAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT RULES ON MEDIA CONTROL.
[9] ALBANIAN JOURNALIST BEATEN UP BY POLICE.
OMRI DAILY DIGEST
No. 241, Part II, 13 December 1995
SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
[1] BOSNIA CONFERENCE OPENS NEAR PARIS.
Delegates from the five-country
Contact Group meet on 13 December with representatives of the
Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Iran, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, and Turkey, to discuss
stability in the Balkans. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that
the Bosnian conference is taking place 50 km north of Paris near Roissy
airport because of the strike-induced problems in the French capital.
Meanwhile, in the Sarajevo suburbs run by the Pale Serbs, AFP reported
that 98.78% of the voters rejected the Dayton agreement returning them
to Bosnian government authority. The validity of the ballot is
recognized only by the Bosnian Serbs. -- Patrick Moore
[2] BOSNIAN FEDERATION ASSEMBLY BACKS DAYTON ACCORD.
Following a long
discussion, the Bosnian Federation's Constituent Assembly accepted the
Dayton peace accords on 12 December, Hina reported the same day.
Assembly members also agreed that new federal laws proposed in Dayton
should take effect on 20 December in keeping with the prescribed time
schedule. They authorized Federation President Kresimir Zubak to sign
the agreement in Paris on 14 December on its behalf, while Hina quoted
Bosnia-Herzegovina's President Alija Izetbegovic as saying "we travel to
Paris to sign the deal, not to negotiate." However, at a previously
unannounced session the same day, the Bosnian republican parliament
decided to reserve the right to annul the Dayton accord if it is not
carried out in due time. In such a case, the constitution of Bosna-
Herzegovina, as envisaged in the Dayton text, would be annulled and the
republican parliament would regain legislative power from the federal
authorities. -- Daria Sito Sucic
[3] CROATIAN OPPOSITION FAILS TO BLOCK GOVERNMENT OVER DAYTON.
Both houses
of the Croatian parliament on 12 December approved Foreign Minister Mate
Granic's report on the Dayton peace talks and the Basic Agreement on the
Region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Srijem, Hina reported
the same day. An opposition motion calling for Posavina to be included
in the Croat-Muslim federation and prohibiting negotiations on Prevlaka
failed. -- Daria Sito Sucic
[4] SERBIAN PRESIDENT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT PEACE PROSPECTS.
Slobodan Milosevic,
following meetings on 11 December with co-chairman of the International
Conference on Former Yugoslavia Thorvald Stoltenberg, told Radio Serbia
that the Dayton peace accord signaled that a lasting regional peace was
at hand. At the same time, he distanced himself from the Bosnian Serbs
and any possible actions they may undertake to undermine the peace. When
asked whether they would seek to foment regional hostilities, Milosevic
said such an eventuality was unlikely, but he did not rule it out. --
Stan Markotich
[5] ROMANIAN CONTRIBUTION TO NATO FORCE IN BOSNIA.
Romania hopes to increase
its ties with NATO by contributing engineering and telecommunications
units to the NATO peace-keeping forces in Bosnia. Radu Timofte, chairman
of the Senate's Defense Committee, told a NATO delegation that his
country's participation in the peace-keeping operations in Bosnia would
achieve far better results than "years of seminars" on the interaction
of the Romanian armed forces and NATO, Rompres and international
agencies reported on 11-12 December. Timofte also told the delegation
that all East Central European states should be integrated into NATO at
the same time to avoid creating insecurity. -- Michael Shafir
[6] DNIESTER TEACHERS, LAWYERS STRIKE.
More than 5,000 teachers in the
breakaway Dniester republic are refusing to return to class after going
on strike six days ago, the strike committee chairwoman told Infotag on
12 December. They are demanding higher salaries and normal working
conditions. A total of 74 schools and kindergartens are closed, and the
protest movement is expanding to other schools, she said. Court
officials from the Rybnitsa district joined the strike this week with
similar demands, paralyzing the work of the republic's courts. The
strikers say they will resume work only after all their demands have
been met. President Igor Smirnov said that those demands cannot be met
but that the authorities "will consider the problem." -- Matyas Szabo
[7] "THE TSAR IS COMING."
Under this headline, Demokratsiya on 13 Decemberpublished a declaration by former Bulgarian Tsar Simeon II, who is
living in exile in Spain. Simeon said he is willing to make his first
visit to Bulgaria since he was forced to abdicate and leave the country
following a referendum abolishing the monarchy in 1946. He gave no date
for his visit and did not say how long he intended to stay. In November,
101 intellectuals wrote to the former monarch asking him to help bring
the country out of its present crisis. The Foreign Ministry said he will
encounter no problems upon returning to Bulgaria since he was never
stripped of his Bulgarian citizenship, AFP reported. -- Stefan Krause
[8] BULGARIAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT RULES ON MEDIA CONTROL.
The
Constitutional Court on 12 December overruled the parliament's decision
to transfer some of its legal powers to the parliamentary Commission for
Radio, TV, and the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, Standart reported the
following day. The judges also ruled that the commission does not have
the right to decide on the management of state-run media, structural
changes, the program schedule, or the media's statutes. But it retains
the right to propose the directors-general to the parliament and to
discuss and propose media-related legislation. The parliament had turned
over those rights to the commission after the Constitutional Court on 19
September declared the provisional statute on the national media's
operations unconstitutional. The judges ruled that the commission does
not have the right to take decisions on behalf of the parliament. --
Stefan Krause
[9] ALBANIAN JOURNALIST BEATEN UP BY POLICE.
Gezim Ashimi, a journalist for
Koha Jone, was called in for questioning on 12 December at the Devoll
police station, where he was severely beaten up, the same newspaper
reported the next day. Ashimi was attacked by an officer who previously
had been suspended from work for misconduct; reportedly, no other
policemen intervened. The officer claimed that the journalist had
discredited the police force in an article published on 8 December. When
Ashimi was allowed to leave the police station two hours after being
called in, the police station chief reportedly told him "not to write
anything against the president." -- Fabian Schmidt
This material was reprinted with permission of the Open Media Research Institute, a nonprofit organization with research offices in Prague, Czech Republic.
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