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SERBIAN PARLIAMENT'S AUTUMN SESSION OPENS
The Serbian parliament's autumn session opened on Tuesday morning, with deputies being expected to discuss a government reshuffle first. The session's 12-point agenda includes also several bills proposed by the government and amendments to some of the existing laws.
The amendments in question include also amendments to six taxation laws providing for lower tax rates and tax deductions as well as the tightening of tax payment regulations.
Parliament is also to review a bill on local self-rule envisaging a one-round majority election system, a bill on the Serbian president's prerogatives and amendments to the decision on replacing committee members.
SERBIA PM MARJANOVIC PROPOSES CABINET CHANGES
Serbia Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic proposed cabinet changes to the Serbia Assembly Tuesday.
Marjanovic proposed Serbia Minister of Transportation and Communications Dragan Todorovic for the post of Deputy Premier.
His other choices are Minister without Portfolio Slobodan Tomovic for minister of mining and power industry, Ratko Marceti for minister of transportation and communications, Jovo Todorovic for minister of education, and Jevrem Janjic for the new post of minister of higher education.
Marjanovic proposed Bozidar Vucurovic, Jovan Damjanovic and Zivota Cosic for ministers without portfolio.
Serbia PM Marjanovic set out that the evident results achieved by his government were achieved in the most difficult of conditions and under pressures unprecedented in the more recent history.
He set out that the basic domains of the Serbia Government's activities would be the continued reconstruction of the country, a decisive implementation of reforms, and the stepping-up of economic and social development.
Serbia Premier Marjanovic said that the reconstruction and reform of society were a major and serious task, and urged the founding of a federal institute for reconstruction and reform of society.
GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY FUNCTIONING WELL
Serbian MP and Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Secretary-General Gorica Gajevic told parliament on Tuesday that the government of national unity had responded efficiently, rationally, with dignity, and, most of all, patriotically, to the problems which the country had faced at a crucial historical moment for the people and state.
Speaking at today's parliament session, Gajevic said the government concept had been confirmed in national defense from the NATO aggression and also in renewal of what the criminals had destroyed in their intent to defeat Yugoslavia.
The functioning of the government of national unity in that period had been adequate to the challenges it had faced, Gajevic said.
"The courage, self-sacrifice, and great unity of the people and leadership in defending the country from the aggressor were the greatest support to the heroic stand of members of the army and Serbian interior ministry," Gajevic said.
The vast energy of the united national defense was transformed into general mobilization for national reconstruction, Gajevic said, pointing out that the setting up of the Directorate for National Renewal just ten days after the onset of the aggression had proven all the strength of the people, their creative energy and vitality.
DUAL STANDARDS ARE BECOMING REGULAR UNMIK PRACTICE
The Presidency of the Serbian National Assembly said Tuesday that dual standards were becoming a regular practice of the UN civil mission in Kosovo and Metohija (UNMIK), and all decisions taken to date by the UN mission were to the detriment of the state sovereignty of Yugoslavia and of the Serbian and Montenegrin population in the province.
A statement released after a regular Assembly session in Kosovska Mitrovica, northern part of the province, gave as an illustration the mortar attack staged by ethnic-Albanian separatists on the village Pasjane near Gnjilane, eastern Kosovo and Metohija, when KFOR and UNMIK sent 50 armoured vehicles and arrested innocent villagers instead of pursuing the perpetrators of the crime and punishing them.
RUSSIA'S UN AMBASSADOR CRITICIZES KFOR AND UNMIK
Russia's ambassador to the United Nations Sergei Lavrov, who arrived for a visit to Yugoslavia on Sunday, said in Pristina on Monday that the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 should include a political dialogue about the status of Kosovo and Metohija between Belgrade and the Kosovo Albanians and the full respect of Yugoslavia's sovereignty.
Following talks with UN Civilian Mission (UNMIK) chief Bernard Kouchner, Lavrov criticized the activities of KFOR and UNMIK.
Some of the measures introduced by the KFOR and UNMIK leaders were not fully helpful in the preservation of the multinational nature of this region, Lavrov set out adding that Moscow expected KFOR to resolve the problem of the deployment of the Russian peace contingent in Orahovac.
The local Albanians, who are holding about 3,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians hostage in this town, have been preventing the deployment of the Russian peacekeepers for more than two months.
"Ethnic groups cannot order the international community where to send which nations in Kosovo and Metohija," Lavrov said.
Lavrov will visit Belgrade on Tuesday to meet with Yugoslav officials.
UN'S DIENSTBIER CALLS FOR LIFTING OF ALL ANTI-YUGOSLAV SANCTIONS
The UN human rights commission's special rapporteur on the former Yugoslavia Jiri Dienstbier has called for the lifting of all sanctions and bans against Yugoslavia.
In his latest report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which will be circulated as an official document among members of all General Assembly and Security Council committees, Dienstbier also urged the world community to offer the necessary humanitarian assistance to Yugoslavia.
Describing the critical situation in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province, Dienstbier warned that Serbs, Gypsies and other non-Albanians were the target of ethnic cleansing and that they were being killed, while their property was plundered and their houses torched.
He said that the problem was that all that was happening in the presence of the UN civilian mission to Kosovo and Metohija (UNMIK), the UN peacekeeping force KFOR and officials of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
He lashed out against leaders of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), saying that they had formed parallel authorities in the province, ignoring UNMIK and decisions creating the basis for the functioning of both UN missions in the province - the security as well as the civilian.
He said that, in addition to Serbs, Gypsies and other non-Albanians who had been expelled from Kosovo and Metohija and had sought refuge in other parts of Serbia, ethnic Albanians threatened by KLA had also fled the province.
He said that the total number of persons who had fled the province since mid-June when the UN mission was deployed there amounted to about 250,000, saying that nearly all non-Albanians had left the province within a short period of time.
Although most of the assessments Dienstbier made in his report are objective, some are unacceptable.
Consequently, he tried to draw a parallel between the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and other non-Albanians by ethnic Albanian terrorists, and measures that Yugoslav state security forces allegedly took against the ethnic Albanian population in their legitimate defence of the country and the people from terrorism.
Referring to measures to be taken to stabilise the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, Dienstbier said that steps should be taken immediately to ensure the respect for laws and to bring to justice and punish all those who had committed murder, plunder and had harassed civilians.
YUGOSLAV DELEGATION MEETS WITH IRAQI VICE-PRESIDENT
Yugoslav Vice Prime Minister Maja Gojkovic and the chairman of the Yugoslav committee for promoting the position of women, Margit Savovic, met in Baghdad on Sunday with Iraqi Vice-President T.J. Ramadan, the Yugoslav embassy in Iraq said on Monday.
The Yugoslav delegation described the situation in Yugoslavia following the NATO aggression and regarding the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244.
Both sides concluded that the struggle for the preservation of the independence and territorial integrity is the main national interest of both countries and that a new world order, dominated by only one power, is a big threat to international peace. Specially underscored was the readiness of both countries for intensifying economic and other forms of cooperation, the statement said.
YUGOSLAV-IRAQI COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION MEETS
The 17th session of the Yugoslav-Iraqi mixed committee for economic cooperation began in Baghdad on Sunday, chaired by Yugoslav Foreign Trade Minister Borislav Vukovic and Iraqi Trade Minister Muhammed Saleh, said a statement received by Tanjug from the Yugoslav Embassy in Iraq on Monday.
Having in mind the mutual interest in promoting comprehensive cooperation between the two friendly countries, it was agreed at the plenary session that the committee work proceed in groups for agriculture, trade and scientific-technical cooperation.
In addition to representatives of state structures of the two countries, a large number of Yugoslav businessmen are also taking part in the work of the mixed committee this year, and they are also representing Yugoslavia at the 32nd International Fair in Baghdad.
YUGOSLAV MINISTER MORINA RECEIVES SOLIDARITY DELEGATION
Yugoslav Minister for Refugees, Displaced Persons and Humanitarian Aid Bratislava Morina has received a delegation of the Yugoslav humanitarian organization Solidarity (YUHOS), headed by Milorad Deretic, a government statement said.
The meeting was attended also by Mufti Hamdija Jusufspahic of Belgrade, who is YUHOS vice-president.
The work of the non-governmental humanitarian organization was discussed, especially the YUHOS activities of providing humanitarian aid for refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The YUHOS representatives informed Minister Morina that their organization was focusing its attention on social care for the refugees and displaced persons who wished permanently to settle in Yugoslavia, to go to third countries, and most of all those who wanted to return to their homes.
Mufti Jusufspahic said that a great many of those who have been driven out of Kosovo and Metohija since the deployment of the KFOR, mostly Romanies, Goranci, Serbs and other non-Albanians, sought aid from Solidarity, which he said, being guided strictly by principles of humanness, helped everyone it could regardless of nationality and faith.
YUGOSLAV MINISTER PLEDGES AID FOR REFUGEES FOR COMING WINTER
Yugoslavia's minister for refugee affairs said in Jagodina, ceentral Serbia (Yugoslavia), o Monday that the Yugoslav and Serbian governments were making efforts to help refugees make it through the winter.
Bratislava Morina said the governments were striving to help the more than one million refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia and those displaced from Serbia's Kosovo-Metohija province by NATO bombs and ethnic Albanian terrorism.
Meeting with Jagodina Mayor Zivotije Jovanovic, Morina said that 450 flats would be put at the disposal of refugees in Serbia this year, and that the federal government had allocated 52 million dinars as emergency assistance to displaced people.
She went on to say that the World Food Programme, too, had pledged aid for 700,000 beneficiaries.
This was the first time the WFP had recognised that there were 700,000 refugees and displaced persons in Yugoslavia, she said and added the Focus charity, too, had set in motion its winter programme of assisting refugees in food, fuel, clothing and footwear.
INTERNATIONAL FORCES HAVE IDENTIFIED WITH THE TERRORISTS - SAYS SPS
Yugoslavia has agreed that the UN peace mission comes to Kosovo and Metohija in order to establish peace, disrupted by the activities of ethnic Albanian separatists and terrorists, and not to observe and register their crimes and thus encourage the criminals and entice them to new crimes, Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) official Zivorad Igic said on Monday.
Igic, who is also the head of the Kosovo and Metohija SPS branch, told a SPS session in Kosovska Mitrovica that during their five-month stay in Serbia's southern province, KFOR and the UN Civilian Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) have identified themselves with the ethnic Albanian separatists and terrorists and have become, either by their powerlessness or intentionally, accessories to their crimes.
Recalling that unprecedented anarchy, violence and terror have reigned since the very first day of the deployment of the UN peacekeepers in Kosovo and Metohija, Igic said that the UN mission has grossly abused its mandate and the UN auspices and transformed UN Security Council Resolution 1244 into an occupation decree which enables the ethnic Albanian terrorists to continually, for the past five months, carry out the most monstrous crimes which horrify the entire civilized world.
CLINTON FOUND GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES IN YUGOSLAVIA AT PEOPLE'S TRIAL
"Bill Clinton, the President of the USA, has been found guilty of war crimes in Yugoslavia and an ecological catastrophe in the Balkan region of unforeseeable consequences," said a sentence passed at a people's "trial" held in the central Athens square Sintagma late Monday.
The public trial of the U.S. was staged in the square in the organization of the Greek Commission for International Relaxation and Peace, a score of non-governmental organizations and political parties and over a hundred Greek actors, cultural and other public figures.
The text of the sentence was written by leading Athens lawyers and judges, and the jury was made up of the several thousand Athens residents at the square, whose name Sintagma, meaning constitution, was symbolic.
After the "people's trial" was over, the bulk of the participants marched to the U.S. embassy despite rain, carrying banners with anti-American slogans and protesting against the U.S. policy in the Balkans and the scheduled visit to Greece of President Clinton.
Strong police forces were present and there were no incidents.
VUK KARADZIC WAS FATHER OF SERBIAN NATIONAL ENTITY - JUL'S MARKOVIC
Yugoslav Left (JUL) Directorate President Mira Markovic said in Pozarevac, east of Belgrade, on Monday that 19th-century Serbian educator Vuk Karadzic had shaped the standard Serbian language at a time when today's developed states had barely come into being.
"They were only beginning to live as nations, and were far from having a standard language, but spoke a variety of dialects with a common ethnic root," Markovic said.
She went on to say that, in this context, Vuk Karadzic was the father of more than the standard Serbian language - he was the father of the Serbian national entity.
She was speaking at a function held in Pozarevac's primary school named after Vuk Karadzic, on the occasion of Education Day and the 212th anniversary of the birth of Vuk Karadzic.
"In a way, it is wrong that the name of Vuk Karadzic is habitually associated with the sphere of education, and occasionally with the sphere of spiritual culture because, if we accept the truth that he was one of the fathers of the Serbian national entity, then his name should be given not only to schools, but also to many other important national institutions," Markovic said.
She further said that Karadzic was one of the most prominent figures in south Slavic culture and in Slavic culture in general and had greatly contributed to the shaping of the Slavic identity.
"Drawing attention to the specific features of Slavic culture, he did not juxtapose it to other cultures, which he knew very well, so that he can be taken as a role model for modern intellectuals and researchers who oscillate between extremes," she noted.
One of the extremes, she said, is the ignorant and arrogant attitude that considers Serbian culture self-sufficient, isolates it from other nations and blocks its development.
The other extreme, she added, is the under-rating of the national culture in favour of the culture of others, even of nations that are inferior in civilisation terms.
Speaking about the role of education, she said that school in the late 20th century is slowly losing the central place it has until recently had in shaping the character of the young generations.
"Today, the character of the young generations is increasingly shaped by the media," she said, adding that the schools should move to forge a link between the spheres of education and information and make the two complementary.
School today should meet three requirements, according to Markovic:
"It should be constantly and creatively in touch with the highest material and spiritual achievements of the age, primarily in the spheres of technology, art and science; it should offer a curriculum that would be easy to master; and last, but not least, it should be beautiful."
Markovic, who had attended the Vuk Karadzic primary school for four years in her childhood, was the first to wish a happy new year 2000 to the faculty and students.
An art exhibition on the subject of the Serbian National and Cultural Revolution was opened as part of the function, and the school's Principal Tijomir Jovanovic spoke of the importance of the school to the educational system of the Pozarevac area.