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YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC RECEIVES IRAQI AMBASSADOR
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic received on Wednesday the newly appointed, extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of Iraq to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Sami Sadun Kati, who presented his credentials.
The Iraqi ambassador conveyed to Milosevic greetings and best wishes from President Saddam Hussain for the wellbeing of our people and the further successful development of Yugoslavia.
Sadun praised the heroic struggle of the people of Yugoslavia against the aggressors and expressed Iraq's readiness to participate in cooperation with Yugoslavia with the aim of realizing joint interests.
Milosevic underscored that Yugoslavia attaches great importance to the intensive development of friendly bilateral relations, economic links and cooperation with Iraq, especially in view of the long tradition, positive experiences and extensive possibilities of that cooperation. Milosevic stated that efforts towards relations of equality and mutual understanding represent the joint interest of all freedom-loving peoples and the best obstacle to the tendencies of enslavement and hegemony in the world.
Milosevic wished the Iraqi ambassador success in the execution of his duties and underscored Yugoslavia's openness towards the expansion of ties and cooperation between Yugoslav and Iraqi partners.
Also present was Federal Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic.
YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC SENDS CONDOLENCES TO YELTSIN
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic sent on Tuesday condolences regarding the tragic victims of the terrorist attacks on the citizens of Moscow to Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, the Russian people and the families of the victims, expressing belief that the struggle against terrorism would defeat the dark aims of those who issue orders and those who carry them out.
NO DEVALUATION OR POWER CRISIS, SAYS SERBIAN PM
The most important task at present is the soonest possible renewal of the country as the main precondition for the normal functioning of the economy and life of citizens, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic told a Serbian Federation of Trade Union Associations Presidency session on Tuesday.
The Presidency discussed the aims and measures of the economic policy in the second half of the year and national reconstruction.
Marjanovic pointed out that the destruction of the infrastructure during the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia last spring caused war damages worth scores of billions of dollars, which has affected a significant decline in production and general social product.
"Work is under way on 26 objects of the road infrastructure, including 22 bridges, and six objects are being reconstructed on railways," he said, adding that more than 600 apartments are being built on 52 construction sites in 22 towns.
"For this purpose, 700 million dinars have been secured in the first stage of renewal," said the Prime Minister.
Speaking about economic trends, he said maximum efforts were being invested in stepping up production, so that industrial production in June went up 29 percent and in July 13 percent against the previous respective months.
Marjanovic especially focused on the program for reconstructing the Zastava auto works which encompass more than 220 companies and 20,000 workers in the company itself and more than 60,000 in sub-contractor firms, as well as repairs and reconstruction of works of the Serbian oil industry NIS.
"About 20,000 workers have been engaged so far through long-term measures of permanent employment of workers left jobless in the NATO aggression, which has cost close to 500 million dinars," he said.
Denying rumours about an upcoming devaluation of the dinar and pointing out that the most important thing for better efficiency of production is stepped up ownership transformation, Marjanovic said strategic companies would be given a one-year deadline to find partners.
These companies come under special government supervision in their transformation.
"If they are unable to do this by themselves, the state will take over negotiations," Marjanovic said, underscoring that the government remains consistent with the main directions of its activities.
ANNIVERSARY OF PENETRATION OF SALONIKA FRONT
On the occasion of the anniversary of the penetration of the Salonika Front in World War One, Yugoslav Army Chief of General Staff General Dragoljub Ojdanic laid a wreath, on behalf of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, at the foot of the Monument to the Unknown Hero in Avala.
Gen. Ojdanic wrote in the Book of Impressions:
"Even today the members of the Yugoslav Army are basing their morale and military virtues on the patriotism and military achievements of the heroes from the Salonika Front.
The military honour and freedom-loving spirit of the defenders of the Motherland have been highly affirmed, for the third time in this century, in their opposition to the enemy and the defence of the country from the NATO aggression."
Wreaths were also laid by the delegation of the Yugoslav Army, headed by Gen. Risto Matovic, the Alliance of the Veterans of the Liberation Wars of Serbs from 1912 to 1920, the Belgrade City Assembly, Patriotic Alliance of Yugoslavia, the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Ukraine and Belarus embassies.
KLA EXTORTS MONEY FROM KOSOVO AND METOHIJA'S ETHNIC ALBANIANS
The ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is forcing ethnic Albanians to pay a ten-percent 'tax' on every deal they make, setting duties to be paid on each shipment from Macedonia, Brussels press quoted Wednesday humanitarians active in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province as saying.
A growing number of Kosovo and Metohija's ethnic Albanians complains about moves by KLA that extorts money from them, but no one dares to file a complaint against it or oppose its actions, the media said.
This shows that UN 'peacekeepers' have not even managed to protect all ethnic Albanians neither in the province nor to set up local administration that would be capable of ensuring the population's security.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanies, ethnic Turks and other non-Albanians have fled the province before ethnic Albanian terrorists since the deployment of the UN peacekeeping force KFOR to Kosovo and Metohija. Even ethnic Albanians are leaving the province in fear of KLA's reign of terror.
The media gave wide coverage of Russia's accusing KFOR members from NATO member states of protecting only ethnic Albanians.
The media said Russian General Leonid Ivashov had accused NATO and the UN civilian mission (UNMIK) in Pristina of trying to remove Kosovo from Yugoslavia as far as possible although Yugoslavia would formally keep sovereignty over the province.
The media also carried Russia's position that it will oppose NATO's proposal on the transformation of KLA into some 'Kosovo Corps' and that it will urge the full disarming of KLA, its demilitarisation and disbanding.
SERB SCHOOLS IN PRISTINA REMAIN CLOSED
Serbs, Montenegrins and all other non-Albanian children who speak the Serbian language in Kosovo and Metohija should be enabled to attend school classes as soon as possible, the president of the Temporary Executive Council of Kosovo and Metohija, Zoran Andjelkovic, said on Tuesday.
"All Serbian-language schools in Pristina and in many other cities remain closed. In today's talks with the administrator of the UN Civilian Mission (UNMIK) for Kosovo Polje, Natasha Andonovska, and the 2,000 inhabitants of the village of Plemetina, near Obilic, I insisted on the creation of conditions for schools to start work as soon as possible," Andjelkovic set out.
ONLY 5 SERB POLICE OFFICERS ATTENDING POLICE SCHOOL IN VUCITRN
Of the first 200 students of the police school in Vucitrn, controlled by the UN Civilian Mission in Kosovo and Metohija (UNMIK), only 17 are non-Albanians and only six Serbs, UNMIK has said in Pristina.
UNMIK said that after five weeks, the second group of pupils would begin classes.
Tanjug learned that only the Serb candidates had to undergo the strict admission tests.
FEDERAL MINISTER MORINA: ETHNIC CLEANSING OF SERBS CONTINUES IN KOSMET
Federal Minister for Refugees, Displaced Persons and Humanitarian Aid, Bratislava Morina, who is also Serbian Commissioner for Refugees, said on Tuesday that the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and other non-Albanians continues in Kosovo and Metohija and that 250,000 internally displaced persons have so far fled the province to the other parts of Serbia in the face of the KLA terror.
Morina set out that the serious humanitarian situation in Serbia and the very hard position of the internally displaced persons from Kosovo and Metohija, are the primary concern of the federal and republican governments and that daily efforts are being made in overcoming humanitarian problems.
The federal and republican governments are engaged on two fronts - sending aid to the displaced in Kosovo and Metohija, and also providing for all who arrived from the province to southern and central Serbia, Morina said.
ANNAN CALLS FOR HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO YUGOSLAVIA
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday appealed to UN member states to offer humanitarian assistance to Yugoslavia.
In a statement, read out by his spokesman, Annan said that Yugoslavia was faced with an extremely difficult economic situation, that the number of refugees and displaced persons in the country was high and that the situation would become even more critical during the coming winter.
More than 500,000 refugees and displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia are sheltering in Yugoslavia, while about 200,000 people who have fled the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province have sought refuge all over the country, the statement said.
Annan, however, failed to mention NATO's 78-day brutal bombing of Yugoslavia, which is the main reason for the grave economic and humanitarian situation in the country.
Making no mention of the NATO aggression, Annan only made reference to its consequences stressing among other things a high unemployment rate, a drop in salaries, power supply problems and other difficulties faced by Yugoslavia following the devastation caused by the alliance member states.
Describing the situation caused by the NATO bombing as highly disturbing, Annan called on donor countries to offer humanitarian assistance to Yugoslavia.
RUSSIA'S UN OFFICIAL - WEAPONS, NARCOTICS POUR INTO KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
Russia's permanent UN representative Ambassador Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that weapons and narcotics were pouring into the Yugoslav province of Kosovo and Metohija via the border with Macedonia, which he said, was practically unguarded.
Illustrating his thesis that the escalation of international terrorism and crime via hotspots is a major problem faced by the modern world, Lavrov told Itar-Tass news agency that the case of Kosovo and Metohija proved this in the best way possible.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced that the Russian delegation will demand in a session of the UN General Assembly that the Security Council resolution on the demilitarisation of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) be consistently implemented, which means that KLA must be fully disarmed and its arms dumps eliminated.
Russia will also raise the issue of anti-terrorist activity and the fight against crime in general, which is an issue with which a large number of countries are faced, Lavrov said.
ITALIAN MEDIA - ETHNIC ALBANIAN VIOLENCE IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA UNABATED
Italian media reported again Wednesday that violence by ethnic Albanian separatists in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province continued unabated.
ANSA news agency said that one Serb had been killed and two wounded in an attack on a convoy of Serb vehicles near the village of Rani Lug on Tuesday.
ANSA said that tens of thousands of Serbs had been forced to leave the province after the end of NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia because of the ethnic Albanians' brutal violence.
The agency said that other non-Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija were also the targets of violence, drawing attention to the case of Luisa Balasini, an Italian whose husband, a Montenegrin, was dead.
It said that ethnic Albanians had torched Balasini's house and all she had acquired during her 38 years in Kosovo and Metohija only because she spoke Serbian.
Turin's daily La Stampa also reported on the matter, saying that ethnic Albanian separatists had made it clear that all non-Albanians should leave the province.
IS KOSOVO READY FOR SECESSION, ASKS AMSTERDAM DAILY
In expectation of Sept 19, when the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) should be demilitarized and disarmed, quite the opposite process is taking place in Kosovo and Metohija, which leads - together with illegal decisions taken by the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo UNMIK in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 - to the complete secession of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia and Yugoslavia, the high-circulation Amsterdam daily De Volkskrant said on Tuesday.
Pointing out that the KLA had never denied its objective was to grow into a military organization, the daily criticized the international force KFOR's tolerance toward this terrorist and separatist organization.
The situation has deteriorated following the departure of the Yugoslav Army from Kosovo and Metohija, said the daily. There are growing casualties among Serbs and Romanies, De Volkskrant said.
With the transformation of the KLA into an official armed force, the last non-Albanian population will be forced to flee to Serbia proper, said the daily.
"Kosovo has been prepared for full secession from Serbia," said De Volkskrant, adding that last week saw the introduction of the German mark as the main means of payment and a separate customs service, and the introduction of new identification documents. And yet, in spite of all this, the international community is pretending that nothing is going on, said the Netherlands daily.
UN representative Bernard Kouchner and NATO will have to invest much strength and effort to persuade critics that they are innocent, De Volkskrant concluded.
RECONSTRUCTION OF RAIL BRIDGE IN GRDELICKA GORGE
Speaking at the opening of the rebuilt rail bridge over the Juzna Morava River in the Grdelicka ravine, the speaker of the federal parliament's Chamber of Citizens, Milomir Minic, who is also the chairman of the boards of directors of the Yugoslav and Belgrade rail companies (ZTP and ZJZ), said that the reconstruction, reforms and resolution of national and state problems would continue.
"We have gathered in Grdelica to mark yet another working victory in the reconstruction of the country," Minic said at the ceremony marking the putting into operation of the bridge linking the north and south of Yugoslavia and the shortest route between western and southeastern Europe.
Minic recalled that the NATO aggressors destroyed this bridge on April 12 killing more than 50 passengers of an international train crossing the bridge at that moment.
SERBIAN GOVERNMENT PROGRAMMES MAKE POSSIBLE OPENING OF 15 COMPANIES
Fifteen small and medium-size companies, opened through the assistance by the Serbian Development Fund and the Labour Exchange Bureau, have begun production within the Serbian government's programmes for the employment of workers whose companies were destroyed during NATO's aggression.
According to the latest figures released by the Serbian Ministry of Science and Technology, which is in charge of the programmes, the Development Fund's funds are used by public and private companies and by physical persons that together provide employment for more than 1,000 workers.
CHINESE BUSINESSMEN IN YUGOSLAVIA
A delegation of the Chinese company Instrimpex and a delegation of the foreign trade and economic cooperation committee of the city of Tianjin, met on Wednesday with Yugoslav businessmen at the Yugoslav Chamber of Commerce (PKJ) in Belgrade.
The secretary of the PKJ board for economic cooperation with the world, Svetozar Krasin, said that economic cooperation between Yugoslavia and China is not at a satisfactory level and that the two countries' trade cooperation could be at a much higher level.
Krasin said that in 1996 Sino-Yugoslav trade amounted to 270 million dollars, 300 million dollars in 1997 and only 65.5 million dollars in 1998. From the beginning of January until the end of July 1999, it amounted to a mere 29 million dollars.
In view of the difficult conditions prevailing in the Yugoslav economy, Krasin proposed that cooperation between the two countries could be realized in the form of barter arrangements, privatization, additional capitalization, purchase of concessions, opening of joint companies and free trade zones.
Instrimpex president, Wang Zhaoli, expressed a wish to help in the reconstruction of Yugoslavia and achieve agreements on cooperation with Yugoslav businessmen.
CHINA WANTS TO HELP RECONSTRUCT FACILITIES DESTROYED IN NATO BOMBING
Serbian Construction Minister Dejan Kovacevic and head of the directorate for the country's reconstruction Milutin Mrkonjic met here Wednesday with a delegation of China's Tianjin province.
The meeting dealt with ways of how the province could help reconstruct facilities in Yugoslavia that were destroyed in NATO's March 24-June 10 aggression on the country.
The delegation showed interest in business projects under which Chinese companies would take part in the reconstruction of Yugoslavia's infrastructure.
Kovacevic and Mrkonjic informed the delegation about programmes for, the pace of and priorities in the reconstruction of facilities destroyed in the NATO bombing.