January 26, 2004
A bit more on Serbia
Meanwhile, whatever government eventually takes over in Belgrade will have nine weeks (until March 31) to produce another batch of war criminals for the Hague. If they don't, they will lose all of the American aid scheduled for 2004-5 -- about US$100 million.
It gets better. This time, they're supposed to locate and turn over General Ratko Mladic. Mladic is wanted in the Hague in connection with genocide in Bosnia, the massacre of several thousand civilians at Srebrenica, and miscellaneous and assorted war crimes. Unfortunately, he's still pretty popular in Serbia, and is believed to have been living in Belgrade on and off for the last three years. So finding him probably won't be too hard, but handing him over will be.
This deadline is nothing new, by the way. The US government does this every year. By each March 31, the State Department must certify that Serbia is giving reasonable cooperation to the Hague... or, slice, all American aid gets cut off. (And the US stops all support for Serbia in international organizations too, so that World Bank funding starts looking iffy.)
In 2001 this provision led to Milosevic being handed over to the Hague at the last moment. In 2002 it led to some complications, but produced a few more war criminals. Last year they more or less got a bye because of Prime Minister Djindjic's assassination (he was killed on March 12). But now the calendar is swinging around once more.
I'd love to see Mladic in the Hague, and I'd really hate to see Serbia lose that aid. But it's not going to be easy for any Serbian government to give him up.
I can not belive it. Somebody just broken my car with his car and he did continue to drive!
I did call the police.. quess what.. they said.. if we don't call you back means we couldn't find him (1 minute after the event) and in this case you just go tomorrow and announce what happend to the police station. Luckly I saw the car and I know the number. Probably he will report that somebody broke his car in the parking place! :)
I liked very much story about your sunday with Alan.