YDS 11/8

Yugoslav Daily Survey Directory

From: [email protected] (D.D. Chukurov)

8. NOVEMBER 1995. YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY

CONTENTS:

DAYTON - TALKS - MILOSEVIC SAYS TALKS GOING WELL

YUGOSLAVIA - U.S.A. - MONTENEGRIN DELEGATION HAS TALKS WITH U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS

FROM THE REPUBLIKA SRPSKA - KARADZIC CONSIDERS PARDON FOR ARRESTED U.S. REPORTER - BOSNIAN MUSLIMS AVOID EXCHANGING ALL PRISONERS - SERBS

SREM-BARANJA REGION - LETTER TO U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL

O P I N I O N S - BAKER SAYS BONN BROKE RANKS WITH CSCE IN 1991 OVER YUGOSLAVIA - LORD OWEN BELIEVES IN SUCCESS OF PEACE TALKS IN OHIO

R E F U G E E S - UNHCR SPOKESMAN SAYS POSITION OF SERB REFUGEES AT BANJA LUKA CRITICAL - SERBIAN PSYCHIATRIST: REFUGEES' HEALTH THREATENED IN MANY WAYS

DAYTON - TALKS

MILOSEVIC SAYS TALKS GOING WELL

D a y t o n, Nov. 8 (Tanjug) - Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who heads the Yugoslav delegation to the peace talks on Bosnia in Dayton, Ohio, said on Tuesday evening that the talks were going well. 'It's going well,' he told briefly journalists as he arrived to a local restaurant at which U.S. Assistant State Secretary Richard Holbrooke offered dinner to leaders of the participating delegations, Reuters reported.

YUGOSLAVIA - U.S.A.

MONTENEGRIN DELEGATION HAS TALKS WITH STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIA LS

N e w Y o r k, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - A Montenegrin delegation, headed by Premier Milo Djukanovic, had talks with U.S. State Department officials in charge of Balkan affairs on Tuesday. The delegation arrived in the United States two days ago at the invitation of a group of congressmen who had earlier visited the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, and includes also Montenegrin Parliament Speaker Svetozar Marovic. On Tuesday, Djukanovic gave a lecture at George Washington University in the U.S. capital on the subject of political and economic trends in the Balkans, with special emphasis on the current phase of the peace process for former Yugoslavia.

FROM THE REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

KARADZIC CONSIDERS PARDON FOR ARRESTED U.S. REPORTER

B e l g r a d e, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - President of the Republika Srpska Radovan Karadzic is considering granting a pardon to arrested U.S. reporter David Rohde, the Republika Srpska news agency Srna said late on Tuesday. The move should be taken as a gesture of good will and as a contribution to the peace talks that are being held at the Wright-Patterson air force base in Dayton, Ohio, Srna said, quoting reliable sources. An appeal to pardon Rohde has been made by his father Harvey Lee Rohde directly to Karadzic. Rohde, 28, Zagreb-based correspondent for the U.S. Christian Science Monitor, was arrested on Oct. 29 in the Republika Srpska which he entered illegally on a false passport, and is serving a 15-day sentence for the offence.

MUSLIMS AVOID EXCHANGING ALL PRISONERS - SERBS

B e l g r a d e, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - Bosnian Serbs filed a protest on Tuesday with U.S. chief negotiator Richard Holbrooke over the Muslim sides' refusal to implement in full article 5 of the ceasefire accord that calls for exchanging all prisoners of war. The Republika Srpska's news agency Srna said that the letter of protest had been sent by Dragan Bulajic, who chairs the Republika Srpska's Prisoner Exchange Commission. Bulajic said that a meeting of the Joint Prisoner Exchange Committee, organised by the UNPROFOR and the ICRC to discuss the matter, had been cancelled at the request of the Muslim side. The letter added that, since the agreement was signed, the Croat side had not shown any readiness, either, of getting down to implementating its article 5. Bulajic said that the most surprising thing of all was the passive attitude of the international community, primarily the relevant bodies of UNPROFOR and the ICRC.

SREM-BARANJA REGION

LETTER TO U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL

V u k o v a r, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - The Council of the Srem-Baranja region on Tuesday sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, voicing hope that his wisdom and that of all peace-loving and democratic powers in the world would help achieve justice and realize democratic interests of the region's population. The letter said that Serbs and Croatians had engaged in conflicts whenever Croatian authorities turned to pro-fascist methods and fascist ideology. Talks with Croatia have gradually turned into ultimatums that Serbs accept such authorities unconditionally and give up their national identity or leave the region.

O P I N I O N S

BAKER SAYS BONN BROKE RANKS WITH CSCE IN 1991 OVER YUGOSLAVIA

B e l g r a d e, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker said on Tuesday that Bonn had gone against the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1991, at the outset of the Yugoslav war, and insisted on recognising Croatia and Slovenia. Baker is quoted by Reuters as saying for German Radio that the CSCE had agreed at a meeting in Berlin in June 1991 that all its members should respect the principle of unity and territorial integrity of the then Yugoslav federation. He said that the United States had been against supporting those of the Yugoslav republics that wanted to secede, but that Washington had probably not opposed Germany enough when it insisted otherwise. 'The result is clear,' he added.

LORD OWEN BELIEVES IN SUCCESS OF PEACE TALKS

V i e n n a, Nov 7 (Tanjug) - The former British Foreign Minister and European Union mediator for the former Yugoslavia Lord Owen said in an interview broadcast Tuesday by Austrian state radio ORF he was convinced that the peace talks underway in Ohio would be successful. He however believes that the new U.S. plan cannot erase the consequences of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, of which that perpetrated in Croatia was the largest in scale. Justice in the Balkans is cruel. Winner takes all and Croatia will probably come out of the conflict as ethnically the purest state emerging from the former Yugoslavia, Owen said.

R E F U G E E S

UNHCR: POSITION OF SERB REFUGEES AT BANJA LUKA CRITICAL

G e n e v a, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Ron Redmond said Tuesday that Serb refugees in northwestern Bosnia were facing a humanitarian catastrophe. Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, Redmond said snow and low temperatures caused serious problems to some 170,000 Serb refugees sheltering in the Banja Luka area. UNHCR is extremely concerned about the fate of these people who were forced to flee their homes last month before an offensive by joint Bosnian Moslem, Croat and Croatian regular army troops in western and central Bosnia, he said. Asked whether UNHCR was concerned about 200,000 Serb Krajina refugees sheltering in Yugoslavia who also have to face winter, Redmond said they were in a slightly better position which, however, was far from being good. He said about 60,000 Serb refugees in collective centres throughout Yugoslavia were in the most difficult position.

REFUGEES' HEALTH THREATENED IN MANY WAYS

B e l g r a d e, Nov. 7 (Tanjug) - Refugees in Yugoslavia should not only receive medical help, they should also be approached from the humane and social sides because their expulsion from their ancestral homes was an act of disgrace to the human civilisation, and especially European, said psychiatrist Ivan Dimitrijevic. Dimitrijevic, who works at the Serbian Clinical Centre, told Tanjug that the hard experiences of the refugees in this latest war were too much to bear in a human life-time, especially because many of them still remembered the fascist terror in World War II. He said that psychiatrists were encountering elements of post-traumatic stress syndrome in most of the refugees they met. Even small problems seem unsolvable to the refugees, who suffer from a lack of support from the people around them and whose friends and families are often dispersed or killed, said Dimitrijevic. He said that many refugees were taking the score of their lives, hesitating both to seek expert help or to accept it. Their behaviour is characterized by anxiety, depression and other psychotic decompensations, addiction to alcohol and even suicide attempts. Dimitrijevic said that refugee centres in Yugoslavia accommodated mostly women and children, whom the locals generally accepted well. Medical treatments, including psychiatric help, have been made available to all inmates of refugee centres, said Dimitrijevic and added that doctors found medical problems of female patients of all age groups particularly complex.