Serbian Orthodox Church

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
December 28, 2005

MONTENEGRIN SECRET SERVICE BUGS OFFICES
OF METROPOLITAN AMFILOHIJE

Protopresbyter Radomir Nikcevic, the chief of cabinet to His Eminence Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral, made the following statement yesterday, December 27, 2005, following statements made at the regular press conference of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic on December 27, 2005, and his question, “What was the Military Security Agency doing in the office of the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral?”

“We were surprised by the statement and question of Milo Djukanovic, asking what has the military security agency been doing in the office of the Metropolitan of Montenegro, all the more so because the President should be first to know that the professionals from the Military Security Agency did not remove the bugs in the Metropolitanate, which the Montenegrin secret police is largely using to eavesdrop on Metropolitan Amfilohije and the employees of the Metropolitanate.

“What would the President have said, one wonders, if the bugs had been removed and the eavesdropping thus prevented?

“Furthermore, it would be only natural for the President to order his service to remove the monitoring devices in the cabinet of the Metropolitan as a sign of good will, for the very reason that he has nothing to fear from the Orthodox Church and her clergy.”

Source: Svetigora Press

31 ATTACKS ON SERBS IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
IN SECOND HALF OF 2005

According to information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Government of the Republic of Serbia submitted on Monday, December 26, 2005 to the Serbian Assembly’s Committee for Security, in the second half of this year 31 terrorist attacks were carried out against Serbs on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, in which two persons were killed and ten were wounded.

During the same period 27 provocations were recorded. The most frequently occurring instances included setting fires to buildings owned by Serbian nations, theft of livestock and stoning of convoys.

In the Ground Safety Zone in south central Serbia 62 cases of machine gun fire, individual shots and detonations from the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, the Republic of Macedonia and on the administrative line with the southern Serbian province were recorded.

Source: www.srbija.sr.gov.yu

FATE OF MISSING PERSONS MUST BE PART OF NEGOTIATIONS
ON KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

On December 26, 2005 representatives of the Serbia-Montenegro Council of Ministers’ Commission for Missing Persons, the Task Group for Missing Persons and the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija expressed their concern that the problem of resolving the fate of missing and kidnapped Serbs and other non-Albanians will be marginalized during upcoming talks on the status of Kosovo and Metohija.

At a press conference in Kosovska Mitrovica the representatives of these bodies assessed that obstruction has also existed in the past with respect to information to Kosovo Serb victims from the Hague tribunal, the International Commission for Missing Persons, KFOR and the Albanian side.

Gvozden Gagic, the president of the Serbia-Montenegro Council of Ministers’ Commission for Missing Persons, Veljko Odalovic, chairman of the Task Group for Missing Persons which is part of the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue, Milorad Todorovic, vice-president of the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija, and pathologist Slavisa Dobricanin addressed reporters at the Coordinating Center’s International Press Center.

They emphasized that the joint Task Group for the Missing, which is led by the International Committee of the Red Cross, has thus far managed to reduce the list of missing persons whose fate remains unknown to 2,494 persons, including Serbs and Albanians as well as other non-Albanian communities. According to their information, more than 760 of the total number of missing are Serbs and other non-Albanians.

Todorovic said that the Coordinating Center would insist on the problem of missing persons being given high priority during the upcoming talks on the status of Kosovo and Metohija but expressed the fear that this issue will be neglected, despite the determination of the Serbian side.

Odalovic, who is also the president of the Committee for Kosovo and Metohija in the Serbia-Montenegro Assembly, said that the Serbian side is not satisfied with the speed of exhumations and identifications of the victims killed between 1998 and 2001 in the province. He emphasized that only 154 bodies, out of 394 exhumed, had been turned over to families in central Serbia in the past four years.

Gagic pointed out that in 1999 and 2000 investigators of the Hague tribunal carried out four thousand exhumations and identified two thousand victims, all of whom, with the exception of one Serb man, were Kosovo Albanians. The tribunal is now refusing to provide the ICRC, as the head of the Task Group for Missing Persons, with documentation regarding the remaining 2,000 exhumed persons who we believe to be Serbs, added Gagic.

Representatives of the Coordinating Center and the Serbia-Montenegro Council of Ministers’ Commission for Missing Persons also met yesterday in Kosovska Mitrovica with representatives of associations of the families of missing persons in Kosovo and Metohija.

Source: www.srbija.sr.gov.yu

FIRST ISSUE OF “VOICE OF BOKA” PUBLISHED

Appearing this month on the media scene of Montenegro is the magazine “Glas Boke” (Voice of Boka) which reports on the economic, political, cultural and sports events of Boka Kotorska, as well as dedicating significant space to the historical and publicist writings of authors from the region. “Glas Boke” is published monthly and was launched by a group of intellectuals affiliated with the NGO “Glas” from Herceg Novi, based in the house of Ivo Andric at Topla.

“After the disappearance of the magazine ‘Boka’, which was published for decades, there was an empty space which we decided to fill with this project. The ‘Voice of Boka’ nurtures the tradition of a magazine of the same name which was published in Boka until 1942,” said editor in chief Milan Dragomanovic, who for many years edited the former ‘Boka’.”

Dragomanovic said that reader is interest is great and that the first issue is already sold out. A new issue of “Glas Boke” is being printed in Podgorica and should be on newsstands by January 1, 2006.

Source: Svetigora Press, Z.K.

[Serbian Translation Services]