Electricity Exports

"We exported electricity, but we won't discuss that now" - this could be the end of a story started by Democratic Party of Serbia vice-president Vladan Batic last week, after he produced an invoice sent to the Czech company Vistavba DOLU LTD by the Serbian Electrical Supply company (EPS), which thanks to a previously signed contract, requires the payment of 167,644 dollars for some seven million kilowatts of electricity which our firm delivered to the Czech partner during November 1994.

"The Government lied to the citizens of Serbia when it claimed that electricity wasn't being exported, this was done on several occasions by vice Prime Minister Svetozar Krstic and Minister of Power Dragan Kostic, even Serbian PM Mirko Marjanovic", said Vladan Batic showing the invoice. The Serbian Electrical Supply Company and the Serbian Government have remained silent.

At the EPS no one wished to comment the matter. It was said unofficially that the matter concerned some late deliveries, while the Serbian Government made no comments.

According to Czech sources, the electricity went to Germany and who knows where from there. Of course, the end user is unimportant, and all we can do is hope that the 167,644.60 dollars ended up where they were supposed to. It doesn't matter that Government lied, we're used to that.

 

Cuts

Telephone numbers owned by Croatians and Muslims in Banja Luka (Republic of Srpska) have suddenly been cut off. To make things even more absurd, most of the subscribers are on the front.

Those in the know claim that the order for the cuts came directly from Pale (Bosnian Serb political center) and refers to all cities in Republic of Srpska, and the only available information given by the PTT in Banja Luka is that 'some numbers are out of order".

The previous telephone cuts occurred in November 1994 when some suburbs of Banja Luka with a majority Croatian population found themselves without telephone lines overnight. It proved later that this was done in order to facilitate the mobilization of these citizens during the night.

 

Medals

"The Serbian national and patriotic organization the Serbian National Renaissance (SNP) from Vienna, which is led by writer Petar Milatovic Ostroski (and which has committees in all European and transatlantic countries where Serbs live), has established a new medal for the most prominent national workers: on February 14 this year the SNP decided to introduce the Medal of Pride and Heroism.

The first recipients of the medal of Pride and Heroism are known. They are: Republika Srpska President Radovan Karadzic (reason: Radovan Karadzic is the fourth Serbian leader after Karadjordje, Milos Obrenovic and General Mihajlovic who has sublimed in himself national courage and diplomatic skill");

Jovan Raskovic ("the paradigm of a rebellion by hypnotized Serbs");

Biljana Plavsic (the "Kosovo maiden of the 20th century");

His Highness Prince Tomislav Karadjordjevic;

RS Speaker Momcilo Krajisnik ("a Serb the Western and Eastern Krajina Serbs can rely on at all times");

Writer, Federal MP Momir Vojvodic ("one of the most consistent Serb torchbearers in Serbian Montenegro after 1945");

Journalist Nebojsa Jevric ("a heroic poet and poetical hero");

SNP president Petar Milatovic ("a paradigm of the Serbian cause in the most un-Serbian city in the world after the Vatican")...

The charters and the money awards will be presented to the recipients by SNP President Petar Milatovic Ostroski soon. Ostroski waived the money with the explanation that he was the "servant of his betters." In this way Milatovic has displayed one of the characteristics which characterize the medal - pride.

This text was published in Javnost, and VREME has taken it over from Monitor.

 

For The Record

During his participation at the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) meeting in Valjevo in the company of Bosko Perocevic and Natasa Gacesa, Goran Percevic, unlike Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic, was dressed impeccably. He and Gacesa had the pleasure of handing out kisses, roses and membership cards.

Percevic had the opportunity of answering questions from the public, of which some deserve to go down on record for their originality, such as: "I didn't watch NTV Studio B because I don't watch it and don't wish to. A person whose name I don't wish to mention has surpassed all limits of good manners in insulting our party and president. The matter concerns the so-called Seselj (Vojislav, Serbian Radical Party leader). Is it allowed to insult a man so, let alone a figure, and can this be stopped?" And the answer: "Since I don't watch Studio B either, I can't comment."

 

Bomb

Several months after the murder of Rade Medjed in front of the Home of Engineers and Technicians, another bomb exploded on Monday March 13, this time in the vicinity of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's office. The bomb was a hand grenade which Petar Janjic (23) from Belgrade threw at policemen running after him. Janjic had previously shot at and killed policeman Rodoljub Lukovic (27), while four policemen were injured from the grenade explosion. None are seriously injured. The same cannot be said of Janjic whose state is described by doctors at the Emergency Center, as "medically serious, but for the time being stable". Goran Milosavljevic (21) from Belgrade, has also been arrested. Milosavljevic and Janjic fled from policemen at Terazije square when the latter asked to see their ID cards. They ran across Nikola Pasic Square and jumped into a no. 37 bus. The police stopped the bus, but Janjic took out the grenade and threatened to activate it. After leaving the bus Janjic shot at Lukovic and together with Milosavljevic tried to run away. The police caught up with them in the middle of Pioneer park and then the explosion was heard. Malicious gossip has it that the frequency of explosions near President Milosevic's office is due to the showing of the TV series "The End of the Obrenovic Dynasty" - it's the same park, and the "palace" is in the vicinity of the old one.

 

Story

The Podgorica-based privately owned magazine Istok carried a moving story last autumn on the life of Mirko Bilic, a former basketball player with the Split-based club Jugoplastika, later soldier and captive in the Osijek garrison in 1991-1992, and captive of the Ustashi camp at the local stadium, who suffered a knife injury in the head from an Ustashi, and then went from hospital to hospital, after which he searched for a contract as a basketball player in Poland and Hungary, and finally ended up as a refugee in Kolasin selling cigarettes and other trifles in order to survive.

The Belgrade weekly Ilustrovana Politika followed up the story in order to help Bilic. A "dark haired, thin and long-limbed youth came to the meeting, tall, walking slowly, quick and logical and as precise as a computer in telling his story. He spent four hours telling us what he had been through, and mentioned his Serb father, a JNA officer in Split, his Croat mother who is a nurse, his eight years older wife "who knew how to deal with my short temper", his son Radovan, his murdered brother, Toni Kukoc who offered 300,000 dollars for his release from the jail in Osijek, the games he played for Jugoplastika and helped win in the last seconds of the play off, club pals, his admiral godfather, fleeing across the Drina River and who knows what else.

That which Istok swallowed line, sink and hook, didn't go down well with Ilustrovana Politika (the story was never published), nor by the Belgrade bi-monthly Duga five months later. In Duga's version the details of this tragic biography differ greatly: the notorious Ustashi torturer Sinisa Remac, who went from camp to camp and abused the captives has been changed to Bilic's own uncle Ninko Sevaric. The unfortunate brother from the Istok version disappears, but the daughter Andrijana appears along with the son Radovan in the Duga version.

The competent Navy organs claim that (alleged father) Nikola Bilic had never been in the Navy, while persons close to the basketball world deny that Mirko Bilic played for Jugoplastika in recent years.

At the Yugoslav Basketball Association we were told that they have been familiar with the "Bilic case" for the past three years, but that they had concluded that the matter concerned a mentally unstable person. We were told at the association that several clubs, touched by the story and fascinated with Bilic's height, entered into certain arrangements with him, but that he has not yet been seen on the floor.

 

In Praise of Folly

From a translator's notebook

The Zagreb weekly Globus has published an interview with one of four court interpreters for the Serbian language in Croatia, who passed the Serbian language test at the Center for Foreign Languages in Zagreb last year.

This is Zvonimir Polic, who has made over 30 translations so far. His customers are Serbs and Albanians who want their documents translated from Serbian into Croatian. "What it boils down to is that the Cyrillic is changed into the Latin script and then the words are changed (different words for municipality, university...) in the end the syntax is also coordinated," said Polic. He added that there were "conceited Croats" who, when they hear that there is an interpreter for the Serbian language, immediately "grab their guns", and say that Croatia is at war with the Serbs, and the "state is introducing court interpreters for the Serbian language". Polic said that there were also different reactions - among those "who don't want the language to be divided".

 

Trade Without Bias

In spite of numerous open questions which exist between Slovenia and Serbia, i.e. Yugoslavia, the time has come to prepare for economic cooperation after the lifting of sanctions, because the competition is already doing so, writes the Maribor daily Vecer in a commentary headlined "Trade and Bias". Serbia has confiscated Slovenian property, it hasn't settled its financial obligations, nor has it settled the matter of reparations, the question of the payments balance is still open, but in spite of all this, it is necessary to be prepared for trade, and not succumb to paranoia and political bias. Apart from Europeans, Belgrade is, according to eye witnesses, full Japanese and Korean businessmen", writes Vecer in an article carried by the news agency STA. In talking of Slovenia's business opportunities on the Yugoslav market, the Vecer commentator claims that "at least 100,000 TAM vehicles in Yugoslavia require spare parts, and the same is true of Tomos motorbikes, and that Rakovica cannot do without Iskra's electronic equipment. Gorenje's household appliances are still highly esteemed by Serbian buyers", ends Vecer.

 

A Jaundice Epidemic

The Rozaja Municipality has been hit by a jaundice epidemic. There are 345 registered cases, but the doctors fear that there are three times as many cases. The fear is justified. Rozaja Health Center director Abdulah Kalac told VREME that parents with ill children only registered one child, and tried to treat the others by applying the therapy recommended by the doctor in the first case. Dr. Kalac has no explanation for this fear of health institutions. Charlatans and quack doctors have appeared, so that the ill usually visit a woman from the area of Berane (earlier Ivangrad), who removes the yellowish color from the eye-white with herbs, but the other symptoms remain. Many are using a special herb and so treating themselves.

Jaundice appeared in Rozaja in August 1994, and reached devastating proportions in March this year. The first epidemiological cycle did not affect surrounding villages, but they too are infected now.

Telephone lines crossed and we found ourselves talking to a woman named Esma who said she feared for her three children who attend the primary school Mustafa Pecanin. She told us that the stench of faeces in the school could be smelled from the main door, and that the mountain water which supplied Rozaja's drinking water, "wasn't the same".

 

Yugoslav Army Officers Arrested

Three Yugoslav Army (VJ) officers have been arrested on charges of espionage for Croatian intelligence services, said the VJ headquarters and the Ministry of the Interior on March 15. The statement says that "in a joint action by the VJ Security Service and the Serbian Ministry of the Interior State Security Department, the intelligence-agent activities of three VJ officers working for the Croatian intelligence service had been stopped. The officers in question are: Captain Cavkusic Savko Enver of the Backa Topola garrison, Lieutenant Ferenc Zoltan of the Podgorica garrison and Lieutenant Zuban Meho Benjamin of the Subotica garrison.

The three officers were arrested on 11 March 1995 and taken to the military investigative jail of the Military Court in Belgrade. Criminal proceedings on charges of espionage, under Article 128 of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Law on Criminal Proceedings have been instigated.