A REFUTATION OF ACCUSATIONS BY MS. LOMIGORA & PARTS OF THE BOSNIAK COMMUNITY AGAINST SWEDISH F. M. CARL BILT The reactions to the early release of Biljana Plavšić from the Swedish Prison, after serving two-thirds of her ICTY-delivered sentence for war crimes in Bosnia, show that passions in the Balkans have not…
Read MoreThe most shocking news in the Western Balkans lately, is the early release of the war crime criminal Biljana Plavsic. Mrs. Plavsic, former president of Republika Srpska, had served two thirds of her sentence in a Swedish prison. The decision was made by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former…
Read MoreSerbia has seen a highly decisive set of directions being formulated at the visit of the Russian President Medvedev in October 2009. These included a Serbian commitment to “a new security commitment in the region” that would rule out NATO as the only mechanism of collective security. While the details…
Read MoreOne of the numerous attempts seeking to solve the stalemate of Bosnia and Herzegovina was the summit held on 9 October 2009, at the Butmir military base, near Sarajevo. The initiators of this meeting were: the European commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt,…
Read MoreOne of the key successes in foreign policy is local knowledge, particularly in areas a state hopes to work in, where they are engaged in war or which they are occupying. Even local knowledge over cultures within one’s own borders is essential if national policies are to be successful. But…
Read MoreThe newest rhetoric with regard to the “resetting” of relations between Serbia and the US after the 1999 NATO bombing over Kosovo — the “resetting” that allegedly took place with the visit of the American Vice President Biden to Serbia earlier this year — is phrased as the quest for…
Read More1. Introduction There is a well-known adage frequently attributed to Einstein to the effect that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This, I suggest, is the kind of insanity which characterizes successive attempts by the Greek and Turkish sides to the Cyprus…
Read MoreWRITTEN BY MR. ZORAN RISTIC The Balkans have always been the backyard of European political planning, the ‘periphery of Europe’ (Chebeleu, Trian: ‘Attitudes of the USA and the USSR towards the South-East European Region’, European Security in the 1990’s: Problems of South-East Europe, Rhodes, Greece, 6-7 September 1991). Throughout history,…
Read MoreAt one point during my adolescence, an elder of my church took me aside to speak to me about walls. Walls, he said, are a protection against things on the other side, the same way religious rules and regulations are a protection against the world outside. Hence, you should feel…
Read MoreUnilateral implementation of the Stabilization and Association Agreement? The Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between the European Union and the Republic of Serbia was signed exactly one year ago. It is a comprehensive and binding document with clearly defined bilateral obligations. Although the commencement of the SAA ratification process and…
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