You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Belgrade' tag.
Serbian Foreign Minister, Spongebob Squarepants
Karadžić in the Hague, negotiations for Mladić’s arrest, a strong dinar and a resurgent economy have paved a fast track to the EU for Serbia. But there is one thorn in the nation’s side that Boris Tadić’s pro-European government cannot make go away: Kosovo.
When NATO bombed military and government targets in Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia in 1999 to halt the fighting between Milošević’s forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, the West registered decisively its support for an independent Kosovo. Bombing Belgrade for what was technically an internal conflict signaled Serbia’s loss of sovereignty in Kosovo. The position has effectively not been changed by the diplomatic and political equivocation of the past 9 years.
Muscled out of Kosovo (justly or unjustly), Serbia lost military and diplomatic avenues to challenge Kosovo’s recent declaration of independence. Which leaves the law. Vuk Jeremić, the Serbian Foreign Minister affectionately known as Spongebob Squarepants, left for New York the other day to seek support for his request that the ICJ review the legality of Kosovo’s independence. Serbia will need the backing of 96 UN nations for the ICJ to adopt Serbia’s resolution and review the Republic of Kosovo’s legality.
Russia, China, and India—all nations with separatist regions—have pledged support for the resolution. But with 45 EU nations recognizing Kosovo’s independence Serbia is unlikely to find the remaining 93. Nonetheless, experts told B92, the resolution carries “moral weight”. It also may incur a diplomatic cost, alienating Serbia from its potential peers in the EU.
If Serbia’s initiative fails to realize an ICJ review, it will remain to be seen how Serbia deals with the thorn of Kosovo, having exhausted the available resources to challenge the state’s independence. The broader question is how, if it can no longer remain on the government’s table, the issue will live on otherwise in Serbian political and social life.
"Serbia in Europe, Kosovo in Serbia" reads a billboard advertising a referndum on Kosovo's status
The latest in a series of rumblings from inside Belgrade about the immanent arrest of fugitive war criminal Ratko Mladić, a source from the Serbian Army Security Agency told Banja Luka newspaper Glas Srpske that negotiations are in progress to apprehend Mladić. Rasim Ljajić, the President of Serbia’s coordination team with the ICTY, has neither confirmed nor denied the comment, suggesting, my colleague noted, that “this is not just hearsay”.
Perhaps the issue is best encapsulated by another piece of news. A bag with a laptop and discs Karadžić had with him when arrested mysteriously turned up today on the sidewalk of a Belgarde suburb three weeks after the arrest. An “anonymous citizen” called in with the tip. It is unlikely that the bag sat on the side of the road untouched for three weeks. It was probably held by the (still) unnamed forces which apprehended Karadžić.
Both this find and the anonymous sources hinting that Mladić’s arrest is immanent follow the same pattern: aiding in the arrest of war criminals without revealing that you’ve helped. The push away from the 90s and towards the EU is one officials are making, cautious that they won’t be implicated in the change. Perhaps they are afraid of ultra-nationalist reprisals, perhaps they are ambiguous about the direction Serbia seems to be heading.
Or, as a British colleague of mine put it “We haven’t forgotten our Communist past”.
Today’s front page of Blic newspaper in Belgrade:
With the arrest of 
Radovan Karadžić and promises to put Mladić in the Hauge by the end of August, Belgrade seems to be making leaps and bounds away from its image as a haven of impunity for major criminals. Blic’s headline today presents Serbs once protected by the government and the controlled media as they have never been presented before: criminals before a legitimate international authority.
Radovan Karadžić arrives at the detention center in the Hague this morning
At 6:30 this morning Radovan Karadžić landed in the Hague. By 7:45 he was in Scheveningen prison. The ICTY now begins the laborious process of preparing, hearing and ruling in the case against the most wanted war criminal of the Bosnian War. Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor, indicted Karadžić for genocide, crimes against humanity, extermination, and persecution among other charges.
At a press conference this afternoon Brammertz said that, although the case carries special importance and the tribunal is “fully aware of the need to be efficient”, Karadžić will probably not appear in trial for a number of months. The prosecution needs to prepare arguments, the court needs to whittle down the mountain of evidence before it, and Karadžić himself needs time to prepare his own defense.
Like Milošević, Karadžić has refused legal counsel and chosen to defend himself. The ICTY, hoping to avoid having Karadžić, like Milošević, turn their courtroom into a soapbox for bombastic nationalist speeches, is considering requiring Karadžić to take legal counsel. The trial will be a second chance for the ICTY, which, one analyst noted, “hopes to address the sense of frustration with and among the tribunal at the failure to sentence Milošević.
Karadžić was extradited to the Hague only nine days after his arrest. His lawyer filed an appeal, which would have delayed the extradition had it not gotten lost in the Bosnian postal system. The deadline for appeal passed this morning, and the ICTY wasted no time in removing Karadžić from Belgrade, where 16,000 protesters have gathered in the past two days. The Serbian Radical Party and the Serbian Democratic Party have organized the rally, bringing in thousands from rural locations where nationalism is extremely popular.
Pro-Karadžić protesters in Belgrade
80 people have been injured in the rally so far, 51 of them police officers. The protesters are calling for the resignation of the pro-European President Boris Tadić, and demanding that Karadžić be tried in Serbia rather than the Hague, calling the international tribunal an element of Western oppression against Serbia. “Everyone knows that the war crimes tribunal in The Hague was designed to try Serbs while the war criminals who killed Serbs are set free”, Elena Pavovski, a 24 year old supporter of the Radical Party told The New York Times, “Karadžić is a hero because he defended Serb lives during the terrible wars of the 1990s”.
