Yugoslav Daily Survey 96-07-09

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From: Yugoslavia <http://www.yugoslavia.com>

CONTENTS

[01] YUGOSLAV PRIME MINISTER MEETS EUROPEAN STATESMEN

[02] PLAVSIC SAYS SHE BEGAN PERFORMING ALL PRESIDENTIAL DUTIES

[03] R.S. PRIME MINISTER PROTESTS TO BILDT

[04] ECONOMIC SUCCESSION TALKS MAKE PROGRESS

[05] YUGOSLAVIA HONOURS WORLD STANDARDS IN MINORITY RIGHTS

[01] YUGOSLAV PRIME MINISTER MEETS EUROPEAN STATESMEN

Kontic, who heads the Yugoslav delegation attending the three-day economic summit of Eastern and Central European countries, told Yugoslav press that he had met Monday Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, the Prime Ministers of Hungary and Poland Gyuala Horn and Wlodzimierz Cimoszewitz, and Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.

During the meeting with Cimoszewitz it was agreed to raise the level of diplomatic representations in Warsaw and Belgrade to the level of ambassadors and to renew inter-state agreements, Kontic said.

Kontic accepted the invitation to visit Poland by the end of this year and agreed with his counterpart to simplify the procedure of granting visas.

Poland unreservedly supports Yugoslavia's reintegration in the international community, Cimoszewitz said.

Kontic and Horn noted that relations between Yugoslavia and Hungary were improving in all fields and agreed to accelerate the drawing up of inter-state agreements, especially as regards incentives to investments and avoiding double taxation.

Recalling that hungary had advocated Yugoslavia's reintegration in all international financial and trade organizations, Horn said it would continue this policy in the future too.

Kontic and Kuchma pointed to the positive development of economic cooperation which could reach two billion dollars a year.

The Prime Ministers of Yugoslavia and Ukraine agreed to eliminate visas and to accelerate the drawing up of a political agreement on friendship and cooperation expected to be signed at the end of this year.

Kontic pointed to Ukraine's contribution to resolving Yugoslav crisis and maintaining peace in the territory of the former federation, and expressed gratitude for its humanitarian aid to F.R.Y. and the refugees it is hosting.

Kuchma underlined that Ukraine would continue insisting of the lifting of U.N. sanctions on F.R.Y. and its reintegration in international commodities and capital markets.

Kontic and Vranitzky discussed the resumption of bilateral cooperation and its expansion to new projects and fields.

They also agreed to intensify high-level bilateral contacts and to adopt new agreements to this effect, especially in the fields of traffic and scientific, technical and cultural cooperation.

Vranitzky hailed Yugoslavia's role in implementing the peace process and expressed full understanding for its reintegration in the international community.

[02] PLAVSIC SAYS SHE BEGAN PERFORMING ALL PRESIDENTIAL DUTIES

Plavsic said the Republika Srpska was ready for Bosnia's elections much before the scheduled date, September 14, and said she hoped the elections would be carried out in a democratic manner.

She said the Dayton peace accords had restored peace, saying all relevant ministries were included in the implementation of the accords.

[03] R.S. PRIME MINISTER PROTESTS TO BILDT

Klickovic said the reconstruction of houses in the Brcko area was a 'precedent directed against the implementation of the Dayton accord', R.S. news agency Srna reports.

Brcko is located in Republika Srpska, but a line of separation with the Muslim-Croat Federation is to be defined by December 14 by international arbitration. Muslim authorities however have not given up their claim to the town, which is located on a strategic route linking Eastern and Western parts of R.S.

Bildt's Assistant Michael Steiner had decided at a meeting in Bijeljina, North-Eastern R.S., without the approval of R.S. representatives, to initiate on July 8 the reconstruction of Muslim-owned houses in three villages in the Brcko area, Srna notes.

Klickovic warned Bildt that he would be personally responsible for any problems that might result from this decision. Recalling that 40 refugee centers accommodating Serbs expelled from their homes still exist in Republika Srpska, Klickovic asked Bildt to 'prevent this unilateral action as it could lead to reactions that R.S. authorities might be unable to keep under control'.

[04] ECONOMIC SUCCESSION TALKS MAKE PROGRESS

After meeting with British professor Arthur Watts, who heads the international team of mediators, Yugoslav team head Kosta Mihajlovic said these questions were of great importance to further progress in the talks on succession to the former common state.

B e l g r a d e, July 8 (Tanjug) - The Croatian Government Committee for Captured and Missing Persons has promised to liberate by August 20 all prisoners of war remaining in prisons in its territory.

The Chairman of the Yugoslav Government Committee for Humanitarian Questions and Missing Persons, Pavle Todorovic, told a press conference in Belgrade on Monday that the Croatian Committee made this promise at a meeting held on July 5-6 in Belgrade.

[05] YUGOSLAVIA HONOURS WORLD STANDARDS IN MINORITY RIGHTS

The report by the Justice Ministry has been drawn up on the basis of conclusions reached by the Federal Government in early May 1996.

The Yugoslav constitution defines the country as a federal state of equal citizens and does not favour any one nation, the report says.

At the time of the census in 1991, Yugoslavia had the majority Serbian and Montenegrin populations, as well as 13 large and a dozen small minority groups, it adds.

The report further stresses that the right of the ethnic minorities to education is fully in keeping with the convention against discrimination in education.

According to figures for 1993/94, Serbia's Northern province of Vojvodina, for instance, had primary schools in five languages - Serbian, Hungarian, Slovakian, Romanian and Ruthenian. In Eastern Serbia, there are 38 primary schools teaching in the Bulgarian language.

Until a few years ago, ethnic albanians accounted for 80 percent of the 37,000 students in Serbia's Southern province of Kosovo-Metohija.

The province ranked fourth in the world in terms of the size of its student body, after the United States, Canada and the Netherlands.

At present, Kosovo-Metohija, where a strong ethnic Albanian separatist movement has been working for more than a decade to detach the province from Yugoslavia and annex it to neighbouring Albania, has a parallel education system.

The report especially draws attention to the problems of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija boycotting also the state medical system and of unemployment, seeing their roots as being political in nature and resulting from a strong influence of ethnic Albanian separatists.

As for the right to information in the mother tongue, figures for 1994 show that yugoslavia had 75 newspapers appearing in the Hungarian language, 17 in Romanian and Ruthenian, 12 in Czech and Slovakian, 25 in Albanian, three each in Turkish and Bulgarian, etc.

The right to religion is guaranteed to all people in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the report says.

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