Yugoslav Daily Survey 96-03-20

Yugoslav Daily Survey Directory

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

20 March 1996

CONTENTS

[A] FROM THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

[01] YUGOSLAV PREMIER: RETURN TO WORLD MARKET, FINANCIAL BODIES FIRST JOB

[B] THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL

[02] THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL GETS COOPERATION FROM YUGOSLAVIA, BOSNIAN SERBS

[03] GERMANY, AUSTRIA ARREST BOSNIAN WAR CRIMES SUSPECTS

[C] FROM FOREIGN PRESS

[04] MUSLIM-SERB COEXISTENCE HELPS VILLAGE SURVIVE WAR, SAYS CZECH DAILY

[A] FROM THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

[01] YUGOSLAV PREMIER: RETURN TO WORLD MARKET, FINANCIAL BODIES FIRST JOB

Special attention was devoted to preparations for forthcoming talks with the IMF and the INRD, a Government statement said. The officials stressed that a dynamic development of the economy, especially of its export-oriented segments, was the main objective of its current and long-term development policies. In order to achieve this, they said, it is necessary to have the understanding and support of international financial institutions to ease the Yugoslav debt burden and the influx of fresh capital and to help in the structural adjustment of the local companies and banks.

[B] THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL

[02] THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL GETS COOPERATION FROM YUGOSLAVIA, BOSNIAN SERBS

Assistant Chief Prosecutor Graham Blewit said that he had received firm assurances from Belgrade that the tribunal would be allowed to open an office in Belgrade in the next few weeks, the tribunal's press service said. He added that the Republika Srpska, too, had given assurances of future cooperation in the investigation of war crimes and criminals.

[03] GERMANY, AUSTRIA ARREST BOSNIAN WAR CRIMES SUSPECTS

Austria said it had arrested a Croat, Zdravko M., on the same suspicion, in Vienna also on Monday. Zdravko M. is wanted also by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the same charge. In the period from May to November 1992, Zdravko M. commanded the Muslim-run prisoner camps at Celebic and Konjic in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he is suspected of having killed or being accessory to the murder of Serb inmates.

Austrian authorities said that Vienna had received Yugoslavia's request for the extradition of the suspect and that the Hague tribunal had requested that Zdravko M. be transferred to the Hague.

Zdravko Mucic-Pavo, a Croat, had been arrested in Vienna, and Zejnil Delalic-Dedo, a Muslim, had been arrested in Munich. Mucic was responsible for the brutal murder of about 30 inmates of the camp which held about 250 captive Serbs from the area of the Herzegovina town of Konjic. Delalic had taken part in the rape of a large number of Serb women and in murders of civilians in Konjic, of which the Republika Srpska's war crimes archives had evidence.

[C] FROM FOREIGN PRESS

[04] MUSLIM-SERB COEXISTENCE HELPS VILLAGE SURVIVE WAR, SAYS CZECH DAILY

'We survived the past four years of war thanks to our Serb neighbors,' the high-circulation daily Mlada Fronta Dnes quoted one Samir B., a Muslim from the village near Mrkonjic Grad, as saying.

The daily said that the village mosque was one of the few still standing in the area, and the imam (Muslim priest) had held daily prayers there all through the war. Local Muslims owe the biggest debt of gratitude to Serb Bosko Tesanovic, Director of the Mrkonjic Grad hospital, who has treated them free of charge, the daily said. The daily quoted Bavljine Muslims as saying that doctor Tesanovic had interceded on their behalf on a number of occasions with the local Serb civilian and military authorities. The daily said that local Serbs had set up a complex system of collective security for the Muslims, giving them safe passage to the town market to sell their produce.

The idyll was shattered when the Bavljine Serbs and other Serbs in the Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo areas were driven out by the invading troops of the Bosnian Croat army and the army of neighboring Croatia in the autumn of 1995.

The occupied western part of the Republika Srpska is slowly reverting to Bosnian Serb rule, in compliance with the Dayton peace accord, the daily said.