Albanianization of Montenegro

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. The Republic of Montenegro's May 21, 2006, referendum confirmed that the state would become fully sovereign, and independent from its former union with Serbia, but the main question was now whether the new state would long survive as a Montenegrin-dominated state. It is now probable that the Montenegrin Republic will be internationally recognized as sovereign and independent by mid-July 2006.

Even by the time its voters opted for independence, Montenegro had a significant proportion of its population comprised of illegal ethnic Albanians, many of whom were pushing for a "greater Albania" regional entity, and it was clear that, in order to get the referendum vote through, Pres. Filip Vujanovic and Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic had to not only ensure that Montenegrins living in Serbia were precluded from voting, but that ethnic Albanians of questionable Montenegrin citizenship would be called in from around the world to vote.

The strength of the Albanian push to "support" Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS) in its quest for sovereignty was based on known long-term plans for the "Albanianization" of Montenegro, which was already a relatively porous transit area of criminal activities, including narco-trafficking and Islamist-jihadist terrorist activities supported by Albanian groups, particularly those linked with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The Montenegro independence move has also long been seen by KLA groups as a stepping stone to the further break-up of Serbia, with the proposed independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Not surprisingly, the KLA leadership in the Serbian province of Kosovo was the among the first to welcome Montenegro's secession from the union with Serbia. Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku -- along with chairman of the KLA-linked Democratic Party of Kosova (PDK), Hashim Thaci -- said that the people of Montenegro had "expressed their will to live free in their independent country", and that Kosovo citizens respected that decision. Ceku also said that this process had proven that Montenegro had a functioning democracy, where each citizen could raise its voice for the future of his country.

[Significantly, the KLA and its supporting groups in the US, led by former US Congressman Joe DioGuardi and his wife, Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, reacted strongly against the formation of a new US political action group which had been created to protect the remaining Christian groups, individuals, and churches which had not yet been driven from Kosovo or destroyed by the KLA. The pro-KLA groups hacked the new Christian group's site, temporarily disabling it by mid-May 2006.]

Illegal trafficking in weapons and narcotics and the movement of jihadist-linked terrorists across Montenegro's borders with Albania, and also across its borders with Serbia and on into Bosnia, is now widespread and routine, and is facilitated by the pervasive illegal trafficking in other commodities, to skirt taxes. The illicit smuggling of tobacco, for example, was, in 2005, reported to have made up 60 percent of Montenegro's GDP. What was now occurring was the growing interrelationship between criminal groups of Montenegrins and Albanians, with the net effect of supporting -- or at least facilitating -- the freedom of action of Islamist-jihadist terrorists. Indeed, the support for the Montenegrin political leadership by the Kosovo Albanian leadership was as much a marriage of corrupt financial activities as it was an alliance which worked to put Serbia on the defensive.

But at least on the formal level, Montenegrin officials had, for the past two to three years, been aware of the danger of the terrorist activities in the area to their future survival, and the Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Affairs Dragan Djurovic, and the Deputy Minister of the Public Security Service of Montenegrin Ministry of Interior Affairs, Mico Orlandic, had developed a series of alliances with police forces and counter-terrorism intelligence units throughout Eastern, Central, and Western Europe, and the United States.

The Ministry of the Interior, in fact, is the focus of Montenegro's security activities, but it is not clear whether there is a consciousness in Podgorica at this point of the need now to disassociate Montenegro's political leadership from that of Kosovo, now that the goal of independence has been achieved. The Kosovo Albanian leadership in Pristina, however, should be expected now to push Podgorica for a return of the support the KLA gave to the independence campaign of the Montenegrins.

Montenegro will not benefit from any of the structures or assets of the Serbia and Montenegro Armed Forces. Under the original founding treaty of the union between Serbia and Montenegro in 1993, it was stipulated that the state which left the union would forfeit all rights to the union assets and infrastructure, which most significantly includes the Armed Forces and the diplomatic missions abroad. However, as negotiations progress on the mechanics of separation, it is probable that the Serbian Government may well sell, or transfer, to the Montenegrins the bulk of the now-dilapidated Navy, taking only the riverine assets for the Republic of Serbia's now growing needs on its river trade with Europe via the Danube and other rivers. Similarly, it would be difficult for the Army and Air Force to remove fixed assets from Montenegro, but Serbia seems unlikely to leave any armor, vehicles, weapons systems, or aircraft of any value to the Montenegrins.

The relatively few Montenegrin senior officers in the union Armed Forces may, or may not, elect to return to Montenegro to help establish the new Republic's Armed Forces. After all, some 200,000 Montenegrins live in Serbia already, and it is likely, now that the referendum has passed, that they would be granted Serbian citizenship. Indeed, although Pres. Filip Vujanovic and Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic were reluctant to allow these Serbia-resident Montenegrins to return to vote in the referendum, it is likely -- given the parlous state of the Montengrin economy -- that the leadership in Podgorica would now move to woo these expatriates back home.

The economic performance of Montenegro significantly encourages participation in the black economy, including smuggling. And this tolerates and cloaks the terrorist-related narco-trafficking and other criminal activities being used to fund particularly Albanian-run political-criminal operations. The Montenegrin economy has scarcely grown in the past decade and more, and is now heavily dependent on US and European Union aid. And many of the illicit aspects of the economy focus on Montenegro's eastern areas, abutting Albania, and in its north, in the Raska/Sandzak area which spans the border region with Serbia. This analyst has witnessed the porosity of the borders in this area, and the extent of the Islamist-jihadist freedom of action, moving goods and people from Albania to Serbian Kosovo and into Raska and on through into Bosnia and Herzegovina via the Gorazde Corridor.

It is not surprising, then, that of the 12+ percent of Montenegrins who describe themselves as Muslim, a majority (7.7 percent of the total population) describe themselves as "Bosniaks", which would imply allegiance to the Bosnian Islamist leadership, which is, in fact, the case. The reality -- the black economy and the significant, unrecorded illegal population -- is far more threatening to the Montenegrin state, and it should be expected that the domination of the economy by Islamist-jihadist -linked Albanian mafia, often working through Montenegrin oligarchs and politicians, will continue to make incoming foreign investment difficult.

And this will make the political situation -- quite apart from the direct intervention on an even larger scale by the KLA-linked groups -- even more unstable in the medium term.

Raid in Bosnia-Herzegovina Steps Up Pressure on Jihadists

From Darko Trifunovic, GIS Station Sarajevo. Bosnian anti-terrorist units raided two locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) during May 23-24, 2006, in a search for counterfeit specialists allegedly connected to radical Islamist underground. Two out of three detainees, all of Arab origin, were released after questioning, but the third, a Tunisian who used the name Abu Malik, was kept in custody.

The search followed the "sure tip" from intelligence services about another Tunisian, Munir Silini, and his alleged ties with a terrorist network. Silini, who had been living in BiH for some time with his wife, Mersija Topic, and four children, had already been targeted by US and Italian specialists in 2003. Western troops seized several computers and Islamic brochures at that time, but no legal action followed. This time, police said they gathered substantial evidence, including video and audio recordings, letters, notebooks, airline tickets and photographs for fake documents. All this, police said, might reveal a part of complicated underground network in Bosnia, which serves as a transfer point between Middle East and Europe for several radical groups.

In parallel with the hunt for terrorists, the BiH Government launched a review of all citizenships given to foreigners during and after the civil war of the 1990s. The papers of some 3,000 Afro-Asians were now in jeopardy, and a leader of the former mujahedin fighters, Abu Hamza, was already threatened to "raise hell" if his combat comrades lost their Bosnian documents. At least nine of them were included on an Egyptian blacklist of terrorists. The whole review was the product of intense US pressure, and, significantly, reflected a new but discreet approach to the issue of terrorist links in BiH which had been impossible while former EU-appointed High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Paddy Ashdown had been in office.

Ashdown was replaced as High Representative in late 2005.

U.N. report: Milosevic poisoned himself

A U.N. report says Serbia's strongman Slobodan Milosevic was not poisoned when he was found dead March 11 in his detention cell.

The U.N. investigation report by The Hague tribunal said, "Nothing has been found to support allegations reported in some sections of the media that Milosevic had been murdered, in particular by poisoning," the BBC reported.

"The results of an independent investigation by the Dutch authorities demonstrate that such allegations are entirely false," the report said.

Milosevic, 64, died of a heart attack in the detention of The Hague tribunal where he had been on trial for more than four years on genocide and war crimes charges stemming from events in the former Yugoslavia from 1991-95.

Milosevic received "proper care" in the tribunal's detention unit, where he enjoyed special arrangements as he conducted his own trial defense. This allowed him to take medicine on his own and not only those prescribed by tribunal doctors.

The U.N. report discarded allegations he had committed suicide. Milosevic already had serious health problems when he was transferred to The Hague from Serbia.

EU opposes Serbian referendum

EU officials have rejected a Bosnian Serb proposal to hold an independence referendum in Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity.

Bosnian Serb politicians are taking advantage of a 21 May referendum in which Montenegrins voted for independence from the state union with Serbia to call for Bosnian Serbs to be allowed to hold a similar referendum on independence from Bosnia, or even to merge with Serbia.

"Holding a referendum in Bosnia is not a good idea, and it is not a welcome idea," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday. The move was proposed by the hardline Serb National Movement (SNP), and supported by more moderate politicians, including Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik.

"The will of the citizens can't be ignored. The Serb people do not want to live in a Bosnia imposed on them. The Serb people want a free Republika Srpska, separated from an imposed Bosnia and Herzegovina," SNP President Dane Cankovic said in a statement. "Bosnia-Herzegovina has become a tyrant that is stifling the will and wishes of Serbs to live in a free and democratic RS," he said.

He said the petition calling for a referendum for the secession of the RS from Bosnia-Herzegovina was "the first step towards the Serb unity". Prime Minsiter Dodik said the Montenegrin referendum should be the basis for determination of the final status of Kosovo and that all peoples in the region should be allowed to decide on their fate in the same way.

Dodik proposes that Bosnia be organized as a federal unit, giving each ethnic group the right to self-determination through referendum. "People who live in Bosnia-Herzegovina believe less and less in the existing state model," Dodik said.

Bosnia-Herzegovina Foreign Minister Mladen Ivanic - a Bosnian Serb - told Serbian media that the right to announce a referendum was a "basic democratic principle" and that the international community should honor that right across the region. "The interest of the Republic of Srpska is to remain within the framework of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but to stop the pressure being put on it. That is what I especially hold against the international community," Ivanic said.

The international community's High Representative in Bosnia, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, rejected the referendum, saying no parallel could be drawn between Republika Srpska and Montenegro because Republika Srpska did not exist before the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war. "The international community will not allow the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be endangered," his office said in a statement.

The Dayton Peace Agreement signed in 1995 carved Bosnia into two political and administrative entities, the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak- and Bosnian Croat-dominated Federation entity. Even the Federation entity, formed in 1994 by peace agreement between Bosniaks and Croats, is not functioning as expected, with Bosnian Croats complaining of marginalization and seeking to create a third entity in which Croats are the majority.

In 2001, Bosnian Croats organized a referendum on the creation of such a third entity. The majority of Croats voted for self-government, but the international community rejected the referendum. Several high-ranking Bosnian Croat officials, including then-member of the tripartie Bosnian Presidency, Ante Jelavic, were charged and jailed for violating country's constitution.

Last October, Jelavic was sentenced to ten years in prison for economic crimes related to the case, but just one day before his sentencing he fled to Croatia, where he is waiting out a legal battle between the two countries over his extradition.

German Politicians to Block Prize for Milosevic Sympathizer

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Peter Handke himself has refused to comment on the controversy

Local politicians in Düsseldorf are likely to block plans to award the prestigious Heinrich Heine Prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke, who has been criticized for his support of late Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Members of the Düsseldorf city council's four major parties, the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Greens all said they would vote against awarding the prize to Handke.

The writer had been named as the winner by a jury last week. But the city council, which gives the prize money of 50,000 euros ($64,190), must approve their decision. A vote has been scheduled for June 22.

"We're not going to make the money available," said one city council member. What's the damage? Editorialists were divided on the likely decision to withhold the prize.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Heinrich Heine

"No one is going to dispute that this is an open affront against the jury," wrote the left-wing Frankfurter Rundschau. "But first of all, the jury was not united when doubts about the nomination arose. And secondly, the damage for Düsseldorf would be even bigger if it accepted honoring Handke in the name of Heine."

Writers at Berlin's left-wing die tageszeitung saw things differently. "Heine doesn't deserve Handke and Handke doesn't deserve the Heine Prize," it wrote. "But there's no doubt that Heine would have rejected the political control of a jury. This form of censorship would be much worse than awarding the prize to the wrong person."

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: A Milosevic supporter holds a picture of the late Serbian leader during a memorial in Belgrade

The move to honor Handke came just a month after France's foremost theater company decided not to stage one of his plays because of a eulogy he delivered for Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president and alleged war criminal who died in March. Handke had described Milosevic as "a man who defended his people."

While Handke, who lives in France, refused to comment on the controversy regarding the decision to award him the prize, he answered his critics in an op-ed piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday. "Nowhere in my work I have called Slobodan Milosevic 'one' or 'the' victim," he wrote.

UN report: Milosevic not poisoned

While some Milosevic supporters have claimed that he was poisoned in his prison cell in The Hague, a new report published Wednesday said that he had self-medicated himself and that experts could not agree whether surgery could have prevented his death.

"Nothing has been found to support allegations reported in some sections of the media that Mr Milosevic has been murdered," the report reads, according to Reuters news service.

Montenegro vote spurs Bosnia Serb referendum calls

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Long-time calls by Serb nationalists for
secession of the Serb Republic from Bosnia have grown louder since
Montenegro voted to split away from Serbia in a referendum earlier this
month.

The Serb National Movement, gathering mostly Serbs who were forced out of
Croatia in 1995, said on Monday it had collected nearly 50,000 signatures of
Serbs across the country for holding an independence referendum.

"The will of citizens cannot be ignored. The Serb people do not want to live
in a Bosnia imposed on them. The Serb people want a free Republika Srpska,
separated from an imposed Bosnia and Herzegovina," said movement president
Dane Cankovic.

Even though its 18-month-long initiative for the Serb Republic's secession
from Bosnia had been ignored by official politics, it gained popularity
after Montenegro voted for independence from Serbia last week.

Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik poured oil on fire saying that a
referendum should be the basis for determination of the final status of

Kosovo and that all peoples in the region should be allowed to decide on
their fate in the same way.

Dodik also proposed that Bosnia should be organized as a federal unit giving
each population the right to self-determination through referendum.

His remarks have been strongly criticized by international envoys, who
reminded Dodik that the autonomous Serb Republic was only created after
Bosnia's 1992-95 war, had no jurisdiction to call a referendum and could not
be compared to Montenegro.

"The international community will not allow the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be endangered," the office of top
peace envoy Christian Schwarz-Schilling said in a statement on Monday.
"Bosnia and Herzegovina is not in question now or in the future."

"For me, those are completely separate events. The Republika Srpska is bound
by the Dayton peace agreement, an internationally binding treaty which
recognizes Bosnia...as a sovereign independent state," he said.

Schwarz-Schilling was referring to the U.S.-sponsored peace accords that
ended the war dividing Bosnia into the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat
federation.

In an open letter to media at the weekend, Dodik said he was only
speculating on possible scenarios in the future and that he was open to talk
to everyone in Bosnia who accepted the Serb Republic as an equal partner.

"I am always ready to talk on how to make Bosnia a better place for all.
When we succeed in this, it will be needless to discuss a referendum issue
because all citizens will say: This is the Bosnia I want," Dodik said.

EU wants Montenegro, but won't offer shortcut

BRUSSELS The EU expansion commissioner, Olli Rehn, said Monday that he hoped to speed up efforts to bring the newly independent Montenegro into the bloc, but he warned that EU membership for the tiny Balkan republic was not inevitable.

Speaking after a meeting in Brussels with Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, Rehn said he was optimistic that Montenegro could conclude an agreement on closer economic and political ties with the EU by the end of the year - a precursor to eventual membership. But he warned that there would be no shortcut to membership.

"Montenegro has a concrete European perspective like other countries of the western Balkans," Rehn said, "However, as I told the prime minister, there is no shortcut to Europe."

The EU has been suffering from expansion fatigue after its 2004 eastward enlargement into a bloc of 465 million people.

Now knocking at the door are Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Turkey. But EU foreign ministers signaled over the weekend that the expansion process would probably slow down given the extent of public opposition.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy, making his first trip to Brussels since taking office, strongly backed the prospect of the EU's admitting new Balkan members.

"We've stressed how important it is to include the countries of the Balkans in the union," Prodi said Monday after meeting with the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. "The absorption capacity of the union should allow this process to go forward." Prodi was the head of the EU's executive arm before he was succeeded by Barroso in 2004.

Rehn will meet Tuesday with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia to discuss its EU aspirations.

The EU opened preliminary membership talks with Serbia and Montenegro last year, but suspended the talks this month because of Serbia's failure to turn over Ratko Mladic to a UN tribunal to be tried on charges of genocide for his role in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While talks with Serbia have remained frozen, Rehn said negotiations with Montenegro could be started separately after the EU's 25 members recognize the country.

But he stressed that both Serbia and Montenegro had membership prospects. Brussels is loathe to give Montenegro preferential treatment over Serbia for fear of spawning a nationalist backlash in Serbia that could destabilize the region.

Speaking on his first foreign visit since last week's referendum for independence, Djukanovic said his nation's goal remained full EU membership. But he declined to set a target date for joining. As part of its independence drive, Montenegro has repeatedly insisted that being moored to the larger Serbia held back its EU ambitions.

"I'm confident that Montenegro can within several years fulfill all the conditions for European membership," Djukanovic said. He added that the peaceful conduct of the referendum had proved his country's democratic credentials.

Preliminary official results of the May 21 referendum showed that 55.5 percent of voters wanted to end their union with neighboring Serbia, surpassing the 55 percent minimum set by the EU for the vote to succeed.

President Filip Vujanovic of Montenegro told Reuters on Monday that the republic could declare independence "at the end of this week or the beginning of next week."

"It is very close. It is a question of days," he said in Sofia, at a conference of Socialist leaders.

Gray Falcon: Pots and Kettles

Lew Rockwell raises a valid question concerning the "trial" of Saddam Hussein: on what grounds, exactly, does one put a government on trial?

"The essence of government is the right to obey a different set of laws from that which prevails in the rest of society. What we call the rule of law is really the rule of two laws: one for the state and one for everyone else.

"Theft is illegal but taxation is not. Kidnapping is illegal but stop-loss orders are not. Counterfeiting is illegal but inflating the money supply is not. Lying about its budget is all in a day's work for the government, but the business that does that is shut down.

"So this raises many questions. Under what law should the heads of governments be tried? If they are tried according to everyday moral law, they would all be in big trouble. Did you plot to steal the property of millions of people in the name of "taxing" them? Oh sure! Did you send people to kill and be killed in an aggressive war? Thousands! Did you mislead people about your spending? Every day! Did you water down the value of the money stock by electronically printing new money that you passed out to your friends? Hey, it's called central banking!

"Judged by this standard, all states are guilty. And all heads of state are guilty of criminal wrongdoing if we are using a normal, everyday kind of moral standard to judge them. Thus are they all vulnerable.

"To be clear, I'm not talking about states in our age, or just particular gangster states. I'm speaking of all states in all times, since by definition the state is permitted to engage in activities that if pursued privately would be considered egregious and intolerable.

"So on what basis can one state put another state on trial? Yes, some regimes are worse than other regimes, but who is to decide and on what grounds?"

Rockwell isn't a moral relativist - quite the contrary. He isn't advocating letting the government off the hook, but rather arguing against the hypocrisy of one government putting another on trial. "Pot, meet kettle," and all that.

When people like me raised that issue concerning the NATO-sponsored ICTY putting Slobodan Milosevic on trial, we got slammed for "defending the monster Milosevic," as if his misdeeds (both real and imagined) were somehow an excuse for outright war crimes committed by Clinton, Albright, Clark, Solana and the rest of that particular "joint criminal enterprise." When Rockwell and others criticize the show trial of Saddam Hussein and the occupation of Iraq, they are "countered" by "arguments" that Saddam was evil. Evil enough to justify starting an aggressive war, murdering tens of thousands, occupying a country, unleashing a jihad...? I don't think so, and I wonder how anyone, in good conscience, can.

VUCIC: EU CONDITION IS NOT MLADIC, IT IS INDEPENDENT KOSOVO

Aleksandar Vucic, general secretary of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), announced today that it is unnecessary to arrest general Ratko Mladic to continue negotiations with the EU because Brussels will continue to blackmail Serbia into recognizing the independence of Kosovo and Metohija as a precondition for membership in the EU.

Emphasizing that the SRS will not support a government that will extradite Mladic, Vucic said at a press conference that Serbia is not the hostage of General Mladic but of an erroneous and poor policy on the part of the government.

"We cannot help but ask the question how long is the list of acts of blackmail to which Serbia supposedly must agree," said Vucic, adding that Kosovo is a billion times more important to the citizens of Kosovo than a million European Unions.

Vucic said that Serbian deputy premier Miroljub Labus' resignation was an immoral act because G17 Plus will continue to support the government as long as negotiations on Kosovo are ongoing.

He said that the SRS expects early parliamentary elections to be called by the end of the year.

Vucic denied that the acting president of the SRS Tomislav Nikolic met recently or is supposed to meet with Serbian president Boris Tadic and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, as some media reported yesterday.

MINERAL WATER SPRING IN KLOKOT MINED

Unknown persons blew up a mineral water spring in the village of Klokot near Vitina, the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija advised.

"The explosive was planted last night at about 8:45 p.m. despite the fact that the spring is located some 100 meters from the first houses in the village and there is a Kosovo police checkpoint only 50 meters away," the Coordinating Center communicated in a written statement.

Vitina municipal coordinator Nenad Kojic said that the houses were not damaged but that the Serb residents of Klokot were extremely disturbed by the explosion.

Today there are about 1,300 Serbs living in the ethnically mixed village of Klokot. Prior to 1999 there was a large mineral water factory in Klokot, which was purchased a few years ago as part of the privatization of socially-owned companies in Kosovo and Metohija.

The Coordinating Center warned that after the mining of the spring, supplying the population with water and the work of the factory for production of mineral water will be impeded.

GRENADE THROWN AT WATER DISTRIBUTION STATION IN NORTHERN MITROVICA

Unknown attackers lobbed a grenade this evening at approximately 10:15 p.m. in front of the main water distribution facility in the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica. Luckily, no one was injured, stated the director of Ibar city waterworks Vladimir Rakic.

He explained that the attackers tossed an explosive device within the parameters of the pump station located in Kolasinska Street on the road to the village of Suvi Do. Neither of the two security guards in the installation was injured, said Rakic, reminding that this is not the first attempt at armed sabotage of this facility.

The targeted pump station supplies drinking water to half of the population of Zvecan and the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica.

ALBANIANS CAME TO VIENNA WITH THE INTENTION OF TALKS FAILING

Pristina, May 5 - Goran Bogdanovic, a member of the Serb team at negotiations on the future status of Kosovo, said this evening that the Pristina team arrived at the meeting in Vienna with the pre-prepared position of talks failing.

"Keeping Serb locations immersed in Albanian municipalities mean a continuation of departures, which the Serb side cannot accept," said Bogdanovic.

He said that the Serb side at the Vienna negotiations of the last two days proposed the forming of 13 additional municipalities in Kosovo and Metohija.

"Our proposal was based on the official report of Kai Eide, the UN secretary-general's special rapporteur for assessment of standards fulfillment," said Bogdanovic.

He said that the proposal of the Belgrade team was based on population numbers, territory and property ownership.

"However, the Albanians consider this proposal an attempt to divide Kosovo. Their position, unlike our own, was that only two Serb municipalities should be formed, Gracanica and Partes, and that during the decentralization process Serbs would be left with 24 percent of the territory of Kosovo, which does not correspond to the real situation," said Bogdanovic.

He explained that the Serb side proposed the forming of a municipalities in Velika Hoca based on the existence of 13 medieval churches there, Gorazdevac near Pec as a Serb enclave, Osojane with the villages which at this time belong to the municipality of Klina, Gracanica, Lipljan, Obilic, Belo Polje near Pec, Strpce and Novo Brdo.

"We proposed that the municipality of Leposavic be divided and the creation of the municipality of Lesak, which had this status until 1959, as well as the forming of the municipality of Zvecan to include northern Mitrovica, and the municipality of Zubin Potok. In Kosovsko Pomoravlje we are proposing the forming of new municipalities in Ranilug, Partes and Vrbovac, and that a part of the territory of Kosovska Kamenica where Serbs are living be annexed to these municipalities," said Bogdanovic.

The Serb side also proposed that the villages of Crkolez, Suvi Do and Banja be annexed to Zubin Potok municipality.

"The whole program and our proposal is based on respect for a basic standard, the continuity of territory populated by a majority community," said Bogdanovic. He assessed that the talks in Vienna were difficult and strenuous.

The results of the negotiations in Vienna will be summed up by Ahtisaari's team led by Albert Rohan, who is scheduled to arrive in Belgrade and Pristina on May 17-18. By then a final version of the decentralization program should be prepared.

Serbia police search Mladic's home

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, May 5 (UPI) -- Serbia's police Friday increased efforts to locate war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic, arresting two more people and searching his family home.

A total of 10 people alleged to have helped the former Bosnian Serb military leader evade arrest have been detained this week. Mladic is sought by a U.N. tribunal on genocide and crimes against humanity charges in the former Yugoslavia.

Police cars, marked and unmarked, streaked through Belgrade's Banovo Brdo district and officers searched Mladic's house and those of his neighbors, B92 radio said. A company run by Mladic's son Darko was also searched.

A toll-free telephone line was opened Friday for people who could offer any information about Mladic's whereabouts.

Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, visited Sarajevo on Friday and called the police efforts in Belgrade a "public show for locals."

Wednesday, the European Union called off association talks with Serbia-Montenegro in protest of Belgrade's failure to hand Mladic over The Hague tribunal by April 30, as the country's leaders had promised. EU officials said talks could resume once Mladic is in tribunal custody.

Del Ponte presses NATO over Karadzic whereabouts

SARAJEVO, May 5 (Reuters) - Chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said on Friday she wanted NATO to say clearly whether fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic was hiding in Bosnia or elsewhere in the region.

Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic were indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for genocide during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Karadzic is believed to move between Bosnia and Montenegro while Mladic is reportedly hiding in Serbia.

"I would like to know if Karadzic is in Republika Srpska (the Serb half of Bosnia), is he in Montenegro or in Serbia?" del Ponte told reporters in Sarajevo.

"I'm asking NATO to be more proactive because I think it is important that if Karadzic is not here that they make a verification of these kinds of rumours so that I can divert my attention to another country," del Ponte said.

NATO commanders in Bosnia have said repeatedly over the past year that they had no evidence that Karadzic was still in the Balkan country. But neither have they dismissed such a possibility.

Karadzic, on the run for the past 10 years, was indicted with Mladic for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the siege of Sarajevo in which more than 11,000 people died.

NATO peacekeepers deployed in Bosnia as part of the Dayton accords that ended the war. Numerous searches for Karadzic and Mladic since then have proved fruitless.

The European Union this week suspended negotiations on closer ties with Serbia over its failure to hand Mladic over to the U.N. court by an end of April deadline.

Del Ponte said she was still hoping that Mladic would face justice soon but that she was not forgetting Karadzic and four other fugitives indicted by the tribunal who are still at large.

"As you know ... I am fighting with Belgrade to obtain Mladic but I am not forgetting that Karadzic is still at large. I want to have all six in The Hague before my mandate expires," she said.

Regional oil summit begins in Serbia

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, May 5 (UPI) -- A two-day regional oil summit has begun in Vojvodina, Serbia, Belgrade's Radio B92 reported Thursday.

According to a Serbian Oil Industry (NIS) statement, companies from 21 countries are due to take part in the Scout Group for East and Central Europe meeting, including Shell, MOL (Hungary) and OMV (Austria). At the summit, participating companies will present some of their key projects.

The Scout Group for East and Central Europe was founded in 1993 to promote regional cooperation, information-sharing and business cooperation among group members. Oil companies from Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and Serbia-Montenegro make up its members.
Serbia hopes to cement its business relationships and strengthen its cooperation with those companies present during the summit.

EU halts Serbia talks over Mladic

The European Union has called off talks on closer ties with Serbia because of its failure to arrest war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic. The EU enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, made the announcement after consulting the UN tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte. The deadline set by the EU for Mr Mladic's arrest expired on Sunday.

Mr Mladic, who led the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s, is accused of genocide in the Srebrenica massacre. Along with his civilian counterpart, Radovan Karadzic, he is the most wanted war crimes suspect in Europe. He is thought to be hiding somewhere in Serbia. Mr Rehn said he had discussed the situation with Ms Del Ponte. "Her assessment is negative," he said. "I must say that it is disappointing that Belgrade has been unable to locate, arrest and transfer Ratko Mladic to The Hague. "The Commission has therefore to call off the negotiations on the stabilisation and association agreement." Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who had promised that Mr Mladic would be located, arrested and transferred to the tribunal, was also expected to make a statement on Wednesday, radio B92 reports.

Serbia was hoping to reach a new deal with the EU by July to take its first step on the road to eventual membership. Significant language All the other countries in the Balkans, except Bosnia, already have such stabilisation and association agreements, providing for closer political and economic ties with the EU. But Ms del Ponte has already called for the EU to take a tough stance on Belgrade and Mr Rehn had said that the next round of talks, set for 11 May, could be called off unless Mr Mladic was arrested.

The BBC's Oana Lungescu says Mr Rehn's use of "calling off" rather than "suspension" of talks is significant as it means the EU executive can resume talks instantly once Mr Mladic is arrested - rather than go through the lengthy procedure of getting political approval from all 25 EU governments. She says there are, however, fears of a nationalist backlash at a sensitive time in Serbia's political calendar. This year, Belgrade stands to lose both the province of Kosovo, where the majority ethnic Albanians demand independence, and its partner Montenegro. It will be holding a referendum in just a few weeks on whether to pursue its union with Serbia.

Empire's minion Draskovic speaks up

Serbia and Montenegro cannot be forced to recognise an Albanian state within its territory, while a change in the country's borders would be a preamble of a new Balkan catastrophe, Serbia and Montenegro's Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned in an interview with the ANA-MPA on Wednesday.

Draskovic gave the interview in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, where he is attending a meeting of South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) member-state foreign ministers that will lead up to an SEECP summit on Thursday. He also stressed that stability in the region will never be achieved unless both Serbia and Kosovo ultimately became part of Europe. "I hope that in the end the Contact Group for Kosovo and the UN Security Council will understand this," he added.

Asked about an EU decision to suspend negotiations for closer ties between the EU and Serbia and Montenegro on the grounds that Belgrade had failed to arrest former general Ratko Mladic, who is wanted to stand trial for war crimes in Bosnia, Draskovic stressed that the decision was holding the entire Serb nation "hostage"."The fact that general Ratko Mladic has not been arrested has generated another event; in a paradoxical way, the entire Serb nation has been arrested and its European future is threatened. This means that we must fulfil our obligation toward the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague and this obligation is primarily one of a moral nature," Draskovic said.

BBC asks: Will General Mladic face kangaroo court?

He is hiding on a hill in central Serbia. He is in an underground military base in eastern Bosnia. He is travelling around the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Or he is relaxing, having a coffee, in his flat in Belgrade. Just some of the locations war crimes suspect, General Ratko Mladic, has been associated with during the past few weeks.

The question that really matters is: does the Serbian government know where he is? Gen Mladic, 64, is charged with genocide for his role during the 1992-95 Bosnian War. Along with his former political boss, Radovan Karadzic, he is Europe's most wanted man. He disappeared from public view about four years ago following the overthrow of his former mentor and Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. There is no doubt that the Serbian government has stepped up its attempts to track down Gen Mladic in recent weeks, as pressure from the European Union and the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, has grown. Search intensifies The authorities in Belgrade have arrested known associates; the defence ministry has carried out its own internal inquiry and admitted members of the armed forces had protected the general in the past; the security forces are said to be carrying out operations on a "daily basis".

Just this weekend, a minister said they had identified a network of 130 people who had been protecting the general. But, as yet, no sign of the man himself. And no one is saying whether contact has been made with the general. And no one is saying whether his former associates, undergoing interrogation, are spilling the beans about his location. In fact, there is a deafening silence from the authorities. A veil has been drawn over what is happening. And there may be good reason. Complex situation Many Serbs still regard Ratko Mladic as a national hero. If he is killed in a bloody shoot-out with Serbian security forces, there could be a strong reaction from nationalists. Serbia is run by a coalition government. Political instability is just around the corner.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica would certainly rather see a dignified surrender from the general. And that might be why everything is taking time, giving him space to make his own mind up to come in from the cold. The question is, what happens if he decides not to? Will the security forces be sent in? How is all this playing out with the Serbian people? Whilst there are many who still see Gen Mladic as a hero who should never be surrendered to The Hague, there are many who are just sick and tired of the whole affair and want it settled once and for all. And all this at a time when Serbia faces two other critical political events. Later this month the people of Montenegro, which forms part of the federation of Serbia and Montenegro, will hold a referendum on whether to become an independent state. And bubbling along in the background is the potential powder keg of Kosovo as it embarks on talks about its final status.