BETAWEEK (E) May 4

A Career: Rada Trajkovic

FROM EXTREMIST TO MODERATE POLITICIAN

The Kosovo Serb politician, Rada Trajkovic, took a short while to cross the path from an extreme nationalist criticizing the Slobodan Milosevic authorities for being too lenient on other nations, especially on Kosovo Albanians, to Serbian cabinet minister who accepts, exercises and justifies Milosevic's policies, to a disappointed outcast, to finally becoming the representative of moderate Serbs in the international administration for Kosovo.

A staunch supporter and loyal follower of Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party, Trajkovic used to fiercely and ruthlessly attack corrupt officials in the ruling Socialist and Yugoslav Left parties before joining the "Government of National Unity" of Serbia, accusing them of "selling Kosovo to Albanians, office by office, street by street, settlement by settlement." It was a time when the Radicals acted as the biggest critics of the regime, attracting the votes of the most radical, but also ultranationalist Serbs.

When the Serbian Radical Party joined the Serbian government on March 24, 1998, Trajkovic was appointed Minister of Family and Child Care, which substantially changed her political views.

When NATO made its first serious threat of bombing Yugoslavia over the Kosovo crisis in October 1998, Trajkovic, then a Radical party MP, openly told the Yugoslav Parliament that her party would take advantage of the intervention, "to deal with Albanian terrorists and all spies in the country."

"We'll use NATO's intervention to deal with Albanian terrorists and all those Helsinki committees, independent news media, congressmen and spies, known and unknown alike," Trajkovic said at the time.

In June the same year, she said, "there isn't a single Serb or Montenegrin who would leave Kosovo," and promised to, "remain with her people in Kosovo until a final solution is found." She held on to her stand even after the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police withdrew from the province, having chosen to stay there.

The key event, which turned around not only Rada Trajkovic's political career but her life as well, happened on Nov. 17, 1998, when she suddenly resigned as Serbian cabinet minister following, "disagreements with Radical party officials," and "internal clashes."

"I feel fortunate and content to be leaving. I could go on being minister for another two or three years, but I want to stay honest for good," Trajkovic said and confessed to having been in a long-lasting clash with the party's undisputed leader, Vojislav Seselj.

"An evil will threaten the Serbian people and state unless that man leaves politics. I feel really sorry for the Yugoslav Left and the Socialists for having a man of such caliber and morale in their ranks," Trajkovic said in an interview with the Belgrade-based Studio B television.

Trajkovic was also known to deliver personal insults even to the Radical party vice-president, Maja Gojkovic, who she said was "having a love affair with a leader of the (Albanian) terrorist organization and its spokesman in Koha Ditore newspaper." Firm in her intent to stay in Kosovo, and following NATO air strikes and the deployment of international KFOR troops in the province, Trajkovic became increasingly close to the Gracanica-based Serb National Council and its leaders Bishop Artemije and Momcilo Trajkovic, dubbed "traitors" by the Socialist and Yugoslav Left parties.

Late last June, she pledged to fight for "the only solution, which until recently appeared insane, and that is Kosovo's division into two entities."

In early 2000, Trajkovic made another unexpected proposal -- that Albanian activist Flora Brovina, sentenced by Serbian authorities to 12 years in prison, be exchanged for Pristina doctor Andrija Tomanovic, abducted by unidentified Albanians in the summer of 1999.

She came under the heaviest fire from Belgrade-based authorities on April 2, when she accepted the post of observer in the Interim Administrative Council of Kosovo, on behalf of the Serb National Council. This caused pro-government news media to label the council "a NATO and terrorist puppet," and "a handful of Quislings."

Trajkovic explained that the decision was a tough one, but aimed at preserving the Serb population in Kosovo.

"It is the Serb community's first show of good will, a hand extended to the world community in a bid to resolve the issue of the Serb community. I feel very comfortable. This is my town, my country. I expect that very soon I'll be arriving at meetings without armored cars and large escorts. This wish of mine will be a big challenge for the international community," she said after the first council session on April 11 in Pristina.

She was born on March 8, 1953, in Merdare village, near Podujevo, on the administrative border between Serbia and Kosovo, in a family of Montenegrin origin.

She finished secondary school in Pristina, where she studied mathematics, before finally opting for medicine.

Upon graduating from the Faculty of Medicine, she began working at the Pristina Clinical Center, where she became head of the otorinolaringology ward. She specialized in throat, nose and ear infections, and did a doctoral thesis on early throat cancer detection.

She was a long-term sympathizer of the Serbian Radical Party and a member of its top leadership, a federal MP, and, finally, a Serbian cabinet minister.

Her husband, Veselin Trajkovic, was also a member of the Serbian Radical Party. After she resigned as family care minister which triggered her expulsion from the party, her husband also left the Radicals and was immediately sacked from the post of dean at Pristina University Faculty of Medicine.

Rada Trajkovic is a member of the National-Political Council of the Church and People's Council in Gracanica, a member of the executive board of the Serb National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, and since April 2, 2000, observer in the Interim Administrative Council of Kosovo.

As a physician she devoted much of her time to opening a new hospital in Gracanica. She was fired from the Pristina-based Faculty of Medicine, which has been moved to Krusevac.

The Christian Democratic Party of Serbia on April 22 said that Rada Trajkovic had become its member in Athens.

She is married to Veselin Trajkovic, with whom she has two daughters, Biljana and Aleksandra, and a son, Dejan.

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5. Economic News Briefs

Serbia levies tax on landowners. The Serbian legislature adopted on May 3 a bill amending the Law on Farmland and introducing a special tax to be paid by owners of farmland that is not used for agricultural purposes. Companies, cooperatives, and physical entities who do not live on unsown farmland will have to pay between 10,000 and 50,000 dinars in taxes (US$207-1,035), or their land will be confiscated for a period of 10 years and given to someone else. The average salary in Serbia, which used to grown enough food to feed its population, is about US$40, and land prices have plunged to less than US$4,000 per hectare. Farmers are mostly losing money because of scissor prices. Explaining its farmland bill, the government said that a total of 250,000 hectares of farmland remained unused each year, adding that the owners of such land are mostly "non-farmers" living in cities or abroad. The government added that such "non-farmers" usually turned such farmland into pastures and that at least 100,000 hectares were in such condition. Opposition legislature member Dragan Veselinov said that the bill would help speculators get rich, enabling them to "acquire large quantities of land."

Some private bakeries increase bread prices, others on strike. Owners of private bakeries on May 3 increased the price of the standard 600 gram loaf of bread from three to eight dinars (16.5 cents) in areas where they are the only suppliers of bread, but are on strike in other areas and demand that the government authorize the markup because prices of raw materials, unlike that of bread, have gone up several times over the three years, said Djordje Ilic, chairman of the Union of Private Bakeries of Serbia.

U.N. Economic Commission for Europe criticizes West over Balkans, Serbia. Instead of learning a lesson from the successful reconstruction of Western Europe by way of the Marshall Plan after the Second World War, the West is repeating the mistakes it made after the fall of the Berlin Wall, refraining from providing enough money for the reconstruction of southeastern Europe. At the same time, it has left the counter-productive sanctions against Yugoslavia in effect, the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe said. In a report published in The Financial Times on May 3, the ECE criticized the difference between promised and real financial aid to the reconstruction effort and failure to link the reconstruction projects into a coherent whole. On the other hand, within the Marshall Plan, a number of countries made their own national programs which were later integrated into regional programs. Neither the EU nor the 29 members of the South East Europe Stability Pact are considering such an approach.

Soros to invest in southeastern Europe. International investor George Soros said on May 2 he would invest in southeastern Europe and offered to head a private equity fund for the region. He told a press conference at the East-West Institute in New York that "I hope that I will be elected to put into practice" a plan for such a fund, which would partially be guaranteed by the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Next month, the directors of OPIC are supposed to decide which of 17 proposals will be financed by US$150 million in funds.

U.S. requests support from private investors for projects in Balkans. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on May 3 called on private investors to back U.S. efforts aimed at establishing political stability in the Balkans by way of economic development. "The region has accepted to do everything it can to create economic, political, and security conditions for profitable private investment," Albright said at a meeting at the East-West Institute devoted to "New Geopolitics in Southeastern Europe and Investment Climate."

Milosevic amusement park opens. Top Serbian officials attended on May 1 the "grand opening" of the Bambi Amusement Park in Pozarevac co-owned by Marko Milosevic, the son of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The list of guests included Serbian Premier Mirko Marjanovic and legislature speaker Dragan Tomic. The park was build last year by the Pozarevac city assembly, the state-run Bambi holding company, and Marko Milosevic's Madona company, which runs a gigantic disco bearing the same name in Pozarevac. Meanwhile, Marko Milosevic's bodyguards brutally beat up several activists of the student movement Otpor, who were later charged by police with "attempted murder."

Manager of national air carrier gunned down. Zika Petrovic, the now late manager of the Yugoslav national airline Yugoslav Airlines, was gunned down in a Belgrade street on April 26. In an attempt to find a motive for the murder, world press outlets speculated that the hit may have been the result of a struggle for both political and economic dominance within the sphere of influence of the Milosevic-Markovic couple. "A fierce power struggle is in progress near the Yugoslav president... The announcement of plans to privatize Yugoslav Airlines (in March) saw an increase in interest by both the legal and grey businesses in the company... That a member of Serbian oligarchy found himself left out during the "reconciling of interests" and decided to get rid of Petrovic, the man in charge of selling the airline, should not be ruled out," Moscow's Izvestya reported the next day. The same idea, or possibly source, was quoted by most of the Western press. "There is hardly a single black mark in the biography of Petrovic, whom I knew personally, if we do not count certain financial arrangements between our government and China into which he was pulled indirectly," former police inspector Mladen Lojovic told BETA. "A motive for this crime should be sought in the old saying that dead men tell no tales," he added. The ruling oligarchy, however, really is trying to take direct control of the remaining state companies by privatizing them. The "family" appoints officials to key positions in the Belgrade Stock Exchange, in the Commission for Securities, and in the Agency for Insuring Deposits and Bank Bailout itself. Amid rumors that changes to the national privatization laws are being planned, a new measure was recently passed allowing bankrupt banks to convert, at astronomical interest rates, what they are owned by their bankrupt debtors into shares, which can then be sold on the "free market" for prices the likes of which can be seen only in conditions where capital is seriously lacking.

Foreigners interested in joint investment, concessions says Yugoslav minister. Yugoslavia's Minister for Cooperation with International Financial Institutions Borka Vucic said on May 2 that "foreign partners" (whom she neglected to name) had invested about DM100 million in projects in Yugoslavia in the first quarter of the year. "Joint investment projects are proceeding considerably well and foreign partners are also interested in concessions," said she. Observers believe that the repatriation of capital stored abroad by the oligarchy could be behind the investments. The main manager of the capital is Vucic herself, they said.

Montenegro set to establish bond market. The Economics College in Podgorica announced on May 2 without going into details that the government was set to open a market for state and corporate bonds.

Three Stability Pact projects for Kosovo ready says Hombach. Bodo Hombach, coordinator of the South East Europe Stability Pact, said on April 30 that the pact had prepared three projects for Kosovo. "We are talking about one infrastructure project, one land mine removal project, and one project for ties between cities in Kosovo and cities in various European countries," Hombach said at a joint press conference with UNMIK head Bernard Kouchner in Pristina.

European union leaders demand lifting of sanctions against Yugoslavia. Emilio Gaballo, secretary general of the European Federation of Unions, said on April 27 that lifting of the international sanctions against Yugoslavia "is one of the necessary conditions for the start of democratic, political, and economic reforms in Serbia," the head office of the independent Yugoslav trade union Nezavisnost reported. Gaballo said that the sanctions destroyed the national economy, caused poverty, increased crime, and encouraged the grey economy and the black market. "These mechanisms are used by the government to get even richer. The EFU will continue to support the demands of Nezavisnost calling on the EU to lift the sanctions," Gaballo said.

Turnover up. Turnover in the retail trade was up in March four percent year on year in constant prices, and 74 percent in current prices, the Yugoslav Statistics Bureau said. Month on month, however, turnover was up 31 percent in constant and 34 percent in current prices. Turnover was up seven percent in constant and 54 percent in current prices in the first quarter year on year. Wholesale turnover was up 114 percent in current prices compared with March last year.

(end)BETA

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