Soros Coming Back

Reactions followed the Serbian supreme court ruling which banned the Soros Fund from operating in the FRY late last month. A February 29 press conference was told by Soros Fund executive board chairman Sonja Liht that they would soon apply to have the fund registered again. That same day, George Soros appealed to the international community to support the right of FRY citizens to receive aid from international institutions. "By annulling the registration of the fund, the Belgrade authorities have inflicted damage on everyone who applied for aid," Soros said through his Open Society Institute in New York. Three days later, Slobodan Milosevic got a letter from the State Department in which Warren Christopher said the court ruling is "undemocratic" and asked Milosevic to enable the operations of the fund. Washington also sent signals that the US could prevent the FRY from joining international institutions.

VREME was told by sources close to the authorities that the Christopher letter was taken very seriously in Belgrade and the fund will probably resume operations soon.

 

Darkness

The Serbian state TV first channel disappeared off screens in Uzice on the Friday prior to the SPS congress and stayed off the air for all of Saturday only to reappear on Sunday night when the congress was over. Politika daily said: "There were interruptions in the transmissions earlier but this time the whole thing takes on a greater significance because of the SPS congress on Saturday. The local population did not get timely reports on the congress."

The local SPS board chairman said a detailed investigation would be launched since a technical fault is not reason enough if we know "that during the second SPS congress there were similar problems in the area."

So Dragoljub MIlanovic has two reasons to worry; he's director general of the state TV and was elected to the SPS executive board. As for Uzice residents, let's hope they won't be late for the next century because of this.

 

Kuna

A recent attempt by UN peacekeepers to pay for goods in Serb Vukovar with Croatian kuna was a draw: a waiter in the Dunav hotel politely refused the currency while a market vendor was tricked into taking a 10 kuna note which looks like 10 DEM. The local Serbs were so upset that a UN spokesman had to explain that this wasn't an attempt to introduce the Croatian currency. We don't know what money will be used after Eastern Slavonia is re-integrated since the Erdut agreement on a transitional administration makes no mention of money.

This wasn't the first attempt to use Croatian money. In the summer of 1994, soon after Croatia introduced the kuna, a Belgrade reporter put a 10 kuna note into a wad of German marks to pay for a meal. It seemed the trick had worked and since the 10 kuna note is only worth three DEM, the reporter ordered some more of them. The next time he came to that restaurant the head waiter asked: "Was it you who laid those kuna on me?". The reporter offered to settle the account in real marks. "No need, I already passed them on to Dusan Bilandzic (deputy chief of the Croatian bureau in Belgrade)."

 

Plagiarism

Homework was always a nightmare for school kids, traditionally overburdened by the curriculum, and recently even more confused by the sudden changes in history and geography. A 12 year old girl in the fifth grade of a Belgrade school was probably not thrilled when the class was told to write an essay about Winter Dreams. She wrote her essay, read it out loud in school, got praised by the teacher and went home to tell her parents. Her mother read the essay and realized that the descriptions of winter were almost completely taken from Mira Markovic's diary in Duga magazine.

The teacher hadn't found anything wrong, he felt the essay reflected the education level of the 12 year old.

 

Break In

Burglars in Podgorica and Danilovgrad robbed hundreds of houses in a single wave. The police had its hands full but their worst headache was the burglary of the home of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's parents. A number of police officers rushed to the apartment headed by Goran Zugic, head of the Podgorica security center. They looked everywhere and touched everything and when the forensic team finally arrived the only finger prints they could get were the policemen's.

The Podgorica police tried to make amends by arresting a number of known burglars and making them take lie detector tests. VREME tried but failed to find out whether the burglars were arrested or exactly what was taken from the Djukanovic home.

 

Payments

As a logical response to the post-congress pre-March 9 period, pensioners in Serbia (March 2), the police and other security services (March 5) and students (March 6 but two months late) got their pensions, salaries and grants.

Completely illogically, the Serbian power company sent bills and warning notes to its customers who owe money.

 

Blame the Sava and ...

Serbian Environment Minister Jordan Aleksic said the drinking water in Belgrade is of "risky quality and the ministry is having trouble keeping up that quality" at a press conference on a project of national water management strategy by the year 2000. Aleksic told BK TV that "the Sava river is to blame for the bad drinking water" because "we can't control it".

His ministry can't be blamed for the fact that just 10% of Serbia's waste water is controlled (figures from the press conference) nor is anyone to blame for the fact that Serbia has just 36 water purification facilities which operate only occasionally.