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YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT CONSIDERS ECONOMIC TRENDS
A federal government session held on Thursday and chaired by Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, considered current economic trends.
The government concluded that political and economic pressures on Yugoslavia are continuing, and that the purchase of raw materials and fuels is being prevented even for humanitarian purposes, the Federal Information Secretariat said.
Regardless of such conduct, which is contrary to all international agreements, the federal government, in cooperation with the Serbian government and other corresponding state institutions, is ensuring that the population is regularly supplied with basic foodstuffs, is carrying out the speedy reconstruction of facilities destroyed in the NATO aggression and is creating conditions for economic development through a comprehensive concept of economic reforms.
In view of the economically unjustified increase of the prices of certain products and services, the federal government demanded from the Antimonopoly Committee to undertake legal measures to prevent this.
SERBIAN GOVERNMENT AUTUMN SOWING ON 1 ML HA
The Serbian government met in session on Thursday, chaired by Premier Mirko Marjanovic, and considered and adopted a program for the autumn sowing this year, with a projection for the next autumn as well, the Serbian Ministry of Information said.
Under the adopted program, plants will be sown on 1 ml of the 3,66 ml hectares of arable land, and spring crops will be sown on 2,33 ml hectares. The remaining 300,000 hectares are planted with perennial fodder plants.
The necessary reproduction material for the autumn sowing will be secured - quality seed wheat and fertilizers, as well as fuel, the ministry statement said.
ANDJELKOVIC VISITS KOSOVO-POMORAVLJE DISTRICT
Kosovo and Metohija Temporary Executive Council President Zoran Andjelkovic and Serbian Assistant Minister of Education Milivoje Simonovic on Thursday visited Gnjilane and neighbouring villages of the Kosovo-Pomoravlje district, where about 30,000 Serbs live.
It was concluded in talks with local Serbs that conditions have been created for classes to start in the local elementary schools as of Monday.
In Gnjilane, Andjelkovic discussed the organization of classes in elementary and secondary schools also with the head of the Gnjilane UN civilian mission regional office.
YUGOSLAV PM BULATOVIC EXPRESSES CONGRATULATIONS TO PRODI
Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic has sent a note of congratulations to Romano Prodi, the new president of the European Union Commission.
On the occasion of the election of the commission and your appointment as its president, I avail myself of the opportunity to extend my congratulations. I hope Yugoslavia and the European Union will soon normalize relations and develop cooperation to the mutual interest, said the note.
EUROPEAN UNION CLARIFIES STAND, BUT STANDS FIRM
The European Union (E.U.) distributed a statement through the Finnish Embassy in Belgrade on Thursday to correct and clarify its policy toward Yugoslavia, but practically remained firm in its stand which includes violations of the UN Charter, interference in Yugoslavia's internal affairs, and the arbitrary implementation of sanctions and discrimination in approving humanitarian aid on the grounds of alleged political suitability of Serbian municipalities.
The statement said the Council of Ministers had decided at a meeting held on Sept 13 that the E.U. will continue to support democratic changes in Yugoslavia. This will be done by helping the Serb people and democratic forces in the country, the statement said. The clear distinction made by the E.U. between the current Yugoslav government and the country's population will remain in future as well, it said.
The internal organization of a country and the choice of its authorities are determined in all democratic countries at elections and in parliament, and it was done exactly like this also in Yugoslavia and Serbia on repeated occasions since the introduction of a multi-party system.
That is why the only answer to the question why the E.U. is trying to split the Yugoslav authorities and people and why only certain groups are called "democratic" lies in the naked fact that this is continued pressure aimed at justifying the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia through changes made according to the wishes of London, Washington, and other western centers.
This is also an effort to cover up the consequences of the NATO aggression, since Kosovo and Metohija, a multiethnic Serbian province until the aggression, is now practically a one-national area from which ethnic Albanian terrorists and bandits have expelled 250,000 non-Albanians, mostly Serbs, since the beginning of the international force presence, killed 300 and kidnapped 450 others.
The meeting on Sept 13 failed to condemn terrorism in Kosovo and Metohija.
At the meeting, the E.U. continued grossly to violate the UN Charter, remaining firm in its sanctions that it had introduced arbitrarily, even though the United Nations is the only organization authorized to impose them.
Violations of the Charter, but also all the principles on which international order was founded following World War II, are also evident in the E.U. actions aimed at ousting the Yugoslav authorities, which can only be interpreted as interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.
IVANOV CONFIRMS RUSSIA'S NEGATIVE STAND ON KOUCHNER'S IDEA
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov reiterated Russia's negative stand on ideas to transform the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) into units of some alleged national guard.
Ivanov said he had made this stand clear to UN representative in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province Bernard Kouchner in their talks on Wednesday, which had lasted more than two and a half hours.
Russia maintains that the so-called KLA (an ethnic Albanian terrorist organization) must be demilitarized in keeping with the relevant UN Security Council resolution, and that those who were its members must be integrated into normal civilian life, Ivanov said.
The formation of military of paramilitary formations under any name can only aggravate the further process of a political settlement of the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, he said.
Ivanov was asked by reporters to comment on a recent statement by chief of General Administration for International Military Cooperation of the Russian Defense Ministry, Gen. Leonid Ivashov, that Russian peacekeepers could leave Kosovo and Metohija. Ivanov said he did not know if this was Ivashov's personal stand or if he had been voicing someone else's opinion.
In keeping with the existing decisions, the stand on foreign policy issues is presented in the country by the Russian federation president, the prime minister, foreign minister, or persons who act on their instructions, Ivanov said, adding that this should serve as the orientation in this case.
ANOTHER ATTACK ON SERBS
One Serb was killed and another wounded at 8.40 p.m. on Wednesday in the sector of the multinational East brigade, the KFOR press centre in Pristina said on Thursday.
KFOR said that the Serbs were attacked in an apartment in Gnjilane and that the KFOR military police is investigating the case.
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS KILL FORMER GNJILANE DISTRICT COURT PRESIDENT
Ethnic Albanian terrorists killed Dusan Petkovic, 65, a former president of the Gnjilane District Court, at about 7 p.m. Wednesday, Petkovic's wife Cveta told reporters on Thursday.
Cveta said the terrorists, three men and one woman, fired at her husband four times - two bullets hit him in the head and two in the chest. They had covered his head with a pillow, she said.
The ethnic Albanian terrorists had entered their home when their mentally retarded son Branislav opened the door. Branislav was also wounded in this attack, she said.
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS CONTINUE PERSECUTING SERBS
Ethnic Albanian terrorists in Pristina are continuing to loot Serb property and persecute the remaining Serbs, the Centre for Peace and Tolerance in Pristina said in a statement on Thursday.
The Centre said that the car of Boban Znidaric was stolen on Wednesday evening, while an ethnic Albanian forcefully moved into the apartment of Ljiljana Zevnik.
Ethnic Albanians moved in by force into the apartment of Milka Cevrljanic and her things were stolen.
Two ethnic Albanians, armed with pistols, broke into Mira Prlincevic's apartment, but fled after the arrival of KFOR. They were later captured by KFOR while carrying things taken out of another apartment, the statement said.
KOSOVO AND METOHIJA OFFICIAL SYAS KLA WILL BE DISARMED BY SEPTEMBER 19
President of Kosovo and Metohija's provisional executive council Zoran Andjelkovic said Friday that he was confident that the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) would be disarmed by September 19.
"All talks that we have held to date with (UN peacekeeping force) KFOR and the UN mission to Kosovo and Metohija on the matter have shown that international factors in the province are determined to bring this about and I am fully confident that no KLA member in the province will be wearing a uniform or carrying arms on the morning of September 20," he said.
He said that it was quite another issue what assignments the international community planned to give to KLA in the coming period, voicing hope that the international community would find solutions that were not contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244.
KFOR officials' repeated allegations of Serb factors posing obstacles, primarily at Kosovska Mitrovica, and of Serb paramilitary troops and volunteers, are nothing but a fabrication aimed at making it possible not to meet the obligations concerning the disarming of KLA in Kosovo and Metohija, he said.
KOSOVO AND METOHIJA OFFICIAL SAYS CENSUS NOT TO ETHNIC ALBANIANS' LIKING
Any census carried out fairly in Kosovo and Metohija will show that over 350,000 Serbs live in Serbia's province as well as slightly over one million ethnic Albanians and a considerable number of members of other ethnic groups, Zoran Andjelkovic, president of the province's provisional executive council, has said.
Anjelkovic was speaking in a news programme by the local television station Palma Plus in Jagodina, central Serbia, late on Thursday.
Commenting on reports that a census might be carried out in Kosovo and Metohija soon as well as the registration of voters, Andjelkovic said that he was confident that this was the reason why the ethnic Albanians had boycotted the 1981 and 1991 censuses, explaining that the two censuses would have made it impossible for them to manipulate figures.
He voiced confidence that those in charge of the census and registration of voters in Kosovo and Metohija would do their job correctly and that their figures would be in line with those released by Serbia years ago.
MINE SWEEPING OPERATION IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
About 1.2 million square meters of land have been swept of land mines in Kosovo and Metohija, the UN Civilian Mission (UNMIK) said in a daily bulletin on Thursday.
The bulletin quoted the director of the UN Coordination Centre, John Flenegan, as saying that this operation included 3,000 houses and 500 schools.
KOSOVO-METOHIJA'S ORAHOVAC TO GET RELIEF AID ON MONDAY
The Yugoslav Red Cross will open a sub-committee in Kosovo-Metohija's town of Orahovac on Monday, according to an official of the Yugoslav committee for cooperation with the UN mission on Thursday.
Slobodan Radosavljevic, head of the Committee's sub-committee for displaced persons and relief aid, told TANJUG that Orahovac, which has about 3,000 Serbs and Montenegrins, would get substantial relief aid in food, clothing, medicine and, later, fuel if necessary.
Radosavljevic said that, over the past week, the sub-committee had visited Gracanica, Kosovo Polje, Brezovica and Strpce and established the needs of the population, so that distribution of aid to these areas would begin on Friday.
He added that the sub-committee would visit other distressed areas in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's U.N.-protected province of Kosovo-Metohija.
Sub-committee Counsellor Dragan Jezdic said that there were 401 international charities active in Kosovo-Metohija at present, mostly aiding ethnic Albanians.
"We plan to contact these charities in an effort to get help also for the Serbs and Montenegrins and other non-Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija," Jezdic said.
OVER 70 ORTHODOX MONASTERIES, CHURCHES DESTROYED IN KOSOVO
Ethnic Albanian extremists and terrorists destroyed over 70 Orthodox monasteries and churches in Serbia's southern Kosovo and Metohija province since the arrival of the international force KFOR in June and robbed over 10,000 icons, about 5,000 church utensils, and hundreds of bells, it was heard in Belgrade on Thursday at the promotion of the book "Kosovo Crucified."
The book, published in Serbian and English by the Raska-Prizren eparchy, gives detailed data and photographs on the destruction of 52 holy objects from June through August.
Many of these monuments of Serbian cultural heritage date back to the 12th, 13th, or 14th centuries (Musutiste, Gornje Nerodimlje, Korisa, Devic, Dolac...), and some new ones, not yet dedicated, have also been destroyed.
The book does not contain data on the latest barbaric destruction of Serb churches and monasteries. With KFOR's blessing, ethnic Albanian terrorists have stepped up this rampage, of which the most recent example is the razing of the St. Vrac church in Zociste.
Since the arrival of the KFOR, more than 200,000 non-Albanians have been banished from the province with violence and crimes. The expelled population includes more than 160,000 Serbs and about 30,000 Romanies, and Metohija region and other parts of the province, as well as many entire towns, have become ethnically pure.
Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle spoke at the promotion. He said neither the Serbian Orthodox Church nor the majority of the Serbian people had ever denied ethnic Albanians or any other nationalities the right to live in Kosovo and Metohija.
The Patriarch said the book presents just an echo of the cry and appeal to the Christian and civilized world and reasonable Kosovo Albanians who see their future in coexistence with Serbs to raise their voices and stop these insane acts.
YUGOSLAV EXPERTS TO TOUR KOSOVO-METOHIJA'S CULTURAL LANDMARKS
The education, science and culture subcommittee of the Yugoslav committee for cooperation with the UN mission will form expert teams next week to work on restoring and protecting cultural landmarks in Kosovo-Metohija, a subcommittee official said on Thursday.
Subcommittee Vice-Chairman Dragan Kolarevic told TANJUG that the expert teams would inspect cultural and historical landmarks in that U.N.-protected province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia and estimate what is needed for their restoration and protection.
Kolarevic said that one of the main jobs of the teams would be to appoint negotiators for each separate cultural institution.
They would hold talks with the UN civilian mission (UNMIK), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the international KFOR force about the status of people who used to work for these institutions and are now jobless.
MINIC: WE WILL NEVER LET THEM TAKE AWAY KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
The speaker of the Yugoslav parliament's Chamber of Citizens, Milomir Minic, said on Thursday in Lajkovac, central Serbia that this republic now needs political stability, harmony of the people, order in the state, great responsibility and hard work.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the day of the Lajkovac district, Minic said the country would be rebuilt, the reforms carried out and the speedy development of Serbia continued.
Minic, who participated in the talks in Rambouillet and Paris on the resolution of the Kosovo and Metohija crisis, said, "they demanded the impossible from us. They wanted us to betray our country and our people. Because we refused to agree to the impossible, the aggression on Yugoslavia was carried out," Minic said adding that we will never allow them to take away Kosovo and Metohija because it is ours and belongs to us.
EXPLOSIVE DEVICE TEARS APART BLOCK OF FLATS IN ST PETERSBURG
The blast that tore apart a nine-storey apartment building in St Petersburg late on Thursday killing two persons was caused by an explosive device equivalent to between four and five kg of TNT, district police chief Alexander Kapturovich said early Friday.
Itar-Tass news agency quoted Kapturovich as saying that the police had ruled out the possibility of the blast being the result of squaring of accounts between criminals and that they were interrogating the building's tenants to find out how the explosive device had been planted on the seventh-floor staircase.
The local police initially believed that the explosion had occurred due to a gas leak in one of the building's kitchens.
Kapturovich said that the blast had set the building's three upper floors ablaze because several canisters with fuel had been kept in one of the flats.
The two persons that were killed were blown out of their flats, while the staircase between the seventh and the ninth floor collapsed.
Seventeen persons were killed in another blast that destroyed a block of flats in Russia's town of Volgodonsk on Thursday.
SERBIAN RED CROSS SENDS AID TO GREEK QUAKE VICTIMS
The Serbian Red Cross organisation sent on Wednesday a shipment of aid to the Greek Red Cross for the victims of a disastrous earthquake that recently rocked Athens and its environs.
The 15-tonne shipment, which shoould reach Athens on Thursday contains 269 tens sleeping four, plastic roof foil and bottled drinking water.
According to the Serbian Red Cross, this is the first aid shipment to be sent from Yugoslavia to the friendly Greek people.
BALKAN CONFERENCE ON MINERAL RAW MATERIALS ENDS IN BELGRADE
The eighth Balkan conference on the preparation of mineral raw materials, at which the latest achievements in the domain were presented, ended in Belgrade on Thursday.
The conference, at which 200 papers were circulated and over 100 read out, was in the focus of attention among scholars in the area.
In addition to scholars from seven Balkan states, the papers were sent also by their colleagues in Russia, Germany, China, Canada, Portugal, Britain and Italy.
The conference's organising committee decided that the next conference be held in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2001.
BELGRADE, PARIS OFFICIALS HOLD TALKS
Head of the Belgrade council executive board Spasoje Krunic and Dragan Covic of the city's government met in Paris on Thursday with head of the foreign relations department Patrick Picour, Belgrade's information secretariat said.
Krunic and Covic informed Picour that more than 3,000 facilities had been destroyed or damaged in Belgrade during NATO's March 24-June 10 bombing because of which several thousand people had been left homeless.
Krunic said that the power supply system, oil refineries and fuel dumps had also sustained severe damage, saying that a large number of Serbs from Serbia's southern province of Kosovo and Metohija had sought shelter in Belgrade.
Picour said that an expert delegation would soon visit Belgrade to take part in reconstruction work and the building of vital utility systems.
He said that the Paris experts would offer assistance to Belgrade's waterworks, its corporation cleansing department and its transport company.
SUCCESSFUL PRESENTATION OF YUGOSLAV COMPANY SEVER AT BRNO FAIR
The products of the holding company Sever of Subotica, in the north of Serbia's Vojvodina province, drew much attention at the 41st international machine-building and electrical-industry fair in Brno, Czech Republic.
During the fair (from Sept 13-17) Sever's delegation met with the representatives of the Czech Trade Agency, which was founded within the Czech Ministry for Industry and Trade.
Discussed was the possibility for production cooperation between Czech firms and Sever, as well as possibilities for marketing Sever's products on the Czech market.
During the Brno fair, Sever contracted the delivery of its electric engines to the Czech Republic in the next year, worth one million German marks.
Sever manufactures electric engines, reductors, electric pumps, generating units, electronic regulation automatic systems, switches, compressors and other electronic devices and equipment.
GERMAN TELEVISION, RADIO ON OUTCOME OF NATO AGGRESSION ON YUGOSLAVIA
German ARD television and Cologne's Westdeutsche Rundfunk said late Thursday that NATO's commander U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark had stated in Brussels earlier in the day what everybody already knew - that claims about alliance successes in the bombing of military targets in Serbia had been nothing but bragging.
Reporters have long time ago learned these facts, released by ARD in one of its programmes, the facts that the alliance itself had to disclose in the end.
Most of the German media have criticised NATO leaders for giving false data about their military successes during the aggression on Serbia.
In the end, it turned out that the data were indeed false, so that it is unclear why Gen. Clark is angry with some Western media and why he has accused them of being more open to the Serb propaganda during the war, the radio said.
NATO has achieved undeniable success only in destroying civilian facilities including factories, housing facilities, hospitals, thermal power plants and radio and television stations, ARD said.
CLINTON DID NOT WAGE WAR AGAINST MILOSEVIC BUT PEOPLE
U.S. President Bill Clinton did not wage war against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic but against the entire Serbian people, while his decision to bomb Yugoslavia was not backed by the U.S. people, Slobodan Bob Djurdjevic, a renowned U.S. businessman, literary critic and champion of truth about Serbia and its people has said.
Taking part in a panel discussion on the world order and the Serbs, held at Serbia's writers' association on Thursday, Djurdjevic said that the U.S. public and ordinary people had opposed the bombing of Yugoslavia from the very start and had demonstrated their disagreement with their criminal government's decisions throughout the United States.
He said that, thanks to associates in Yugoslavia, 198 photographs depicting the devastation caused by NATO in the country and 480 items about it had been distributed through the Internet between March 24 and June 9, so that the network's users throughout the world could learn the truth about the alliance's crimes.
He said that, in late April, the site about the NATO aggression was among the top 35 of the Internet's 40 million sites, saying that a large-scale peace march, which had ended in front of the Pentagon and which had rallied more than 30,000 U.S. citizens, was the most massive peace march since the war in Vietnam.
None of it has reached Yugoslavia and Europe, however, thanks to the Clinton administration's media blockade, because the war against a small but unconquerable country was launched by the parasitic, Machiavellian and criminal circles of that same Clinton administration, he said.