Stop Tanjug!

Mirko Marjanovic, the Serbian premier: "I am very different from Kinkel. He is an enemy of this country, while I am one of its leaders".

Friday 13th was a bad day for the Yugoslav News Agency (Tanjug) and the Yugoslav foreign ministry. Around six o'clock that afternoon, Tanjug sent to its subscribers an extensive news bulletin from the foreign ministry, with the following headline: "Promoting ties with European Union states". However, exactly an hour later, Tanjug sent an urgent message to its subscribers instructing them not to publish the bulletin. At one minute past eleven, the news agency officially confirmed that it was taking back the bulletin.
"Killing" a story that has already been published happens very rarely in professional news agencies. When it does, heads usually roll. So what exactly happened in Tanjug?
The report was made when the state secretary of the federal foreign ministry, Dragomir Vucicevic, held an informal briefing for several Tanjug reporters. The goal was to inform the selected reporters on details concerning federal foreign minister Zivadin Jovanovic's tour of EU countries. Two thirds of the report were full of the usual regime phrases saying the goal of the foreign minister's tour was to "play a constructive part in establishing lasting peace in the region, promote the ever-so-good bilateral ties, step up trade" and so on. However, the final third came as something of a surprise, as Vucicevic focused on Zivadinovic's planned visit to France and Germany. "There is a setback in relations between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and France, wjich - in our opinion - is groundless. Both political and economic ties between the two countries have suffered a setback", Vucicevic said according to Tanjug. The Yugoslav News Agency said the following about Vucicevic's expose: "Assessing the initiative shown by French foreign minister Huber Vedrinne and his German counterpart Klaus Kinkel to visit Yugoslavia together, Vucicevic said it was unacceptable because of its nature and the unacceptable conditions made by the two ministers".

"Both Vedrinne and Kinkel are welcome in Yugoslavia if they come separately, but their joint visit is out of the question because of the unacceptable nature of their initiative", Vucicevic underscored, and Tanjug duly quoted.  The remainder of the incriminated report deals with subversive activities of the Democratic Alliance of Bulgarians in Yugoslavia.
Tanjug recently published a number of foreign policy comments on Kinkel which make Vucicevic look kind to the German foreign minister. Why then did the Yugoslav News Agency want the report on Vucicevic's briefing revoked?

One of the obvious reasons is the fact that the Yugoslav foreign minister, Dragan Zivadinovic, is due to visit France in less than a week. It is nothing short of scandalous that a country (allegedly) wanting to promote ties with another country criticizes its foreign minister, less than a week before its own foreign minister is due to visit that very same country. Even less convenient is directing the criticism against ties existing between France and Germany, which both asked Yugoslavia to open a dialogue with the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and simply implement an agreement on education signed by Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova two years ago. Last but not least, how do you promote ties with the EU if your foreign ministry criticizes its two leading countries in such a manner?

It is also unclear exactly how Dragomir Vucicevic, a rare survivor of ideological and political purges in the foreign ministry, made such an error. There is the theory of conspiracy, according to which the general idea was to discredit Vucicevic ahead of the upcoming changes in the structure of Yugoslavia's diplomacy. The champions of this theory point out that Tanjug's report was signed by the desk rather than the editor on duty, which is the regular procedure, and they remind us that Vucicevic was given the unpleasant task of pulling the Yugoslav delegation out of a recent EU parliament session in Bonn. They believe somebody wanted to label Vucicevic as a member of the "hardline" team persistently impeding our integration and cooperation with the world.

The other theory, which is far closer to reality, rests on the explanation that the scandal resulted from all-round confusion in both the federal foreign ministry and Tanjug. There are no hardline or moderate teams in Yugoslavia's foreign policy, because all decisions, big and minor, are made by one man and one man only - Slobodan Milosevic. Due to his many commitments, the Yugoslav president probably loses his sense of coordination at times, which is when things like this happen. The report on Vucicevic's briefing should never have gone public, but someone in Tanjug was unaware of this. It is possible that the report was meant to be one of Tanjug's "classified", but ended up in the general bulletin by mistake.

Anyhow, the damage has been done and a quick withdrawal of the report did little to repair it. The French AFP news agency took the most interesting bits of the report before it was taken back and published them worldwide.

 The Yugoslav foreign minister, Zivadin Jovanovic, will probably get a cold reception in Paris as a result, and the chances that he will be able to promote ties between France and Yugoslavia are very slim.

There is a story that one of our politicians from Tito's era once said to "stop Reuters" when the agency had carried some bad and unpleasant news from Yugoslavia. Tito's followers, on the other hand, can't even stop Tanjug.