Newsletter for 7/15/2019: France's Macron on Official Two Day Visit to Serbia. Montenegro Celebrates Statehood Day. EUFOR Commander Visits Migrant Camps in BiH. Kosovo Takes Over SEECP Presidency.

HAPPY STATEHOOD DAY MONTENEGRO (JULY 13)!

The US Embassy in Belgrade issued a warning to avoid areas surrounding the embassy and embassies of NATO allies due to demonstrations against the 1999 NATO campaign in Serbia.

French President Emmanuel Macron will be on a two day official visit to Serbia starting today. Serbian tabloids say that Macron is coming with five messages.

Bosnian Presidency Chairman Milorad Dodik denies genocide occurred in Srebrenica: “They made a myth about Srebrenica around which the national identity of Bosniaks is being built. As the Serbs have a Kosovo myth, they make Srebrenica myth, because there is no serious nation without having its own myth.”

“Why would a law be passed on this? Because they are not sure that it could be supported by the facts. If it was a genocide, there is no reasonable person who would not agree to that qualification. Now, this qualification is being imposed by court decisions, and by exerting political pressures. The British tried to proclaim Serbs genocidal nation, and Serbs lost half the population in the past century.”

Kosovo Minister of Foreign Affairs Behgjet Pacolli will officially open Kosovo’s presidency of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP). Kosovo will hold the presidency for a one year period.

President of N. Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski will be on a two day official visit to Slovenia starting today.

Major General Reinhard Trischak, EUFOR Commander, visited migrant camps in the Bosnia border towns of Bihac and Vujcak. In addition to local officials, he met aid workers from IOM, UNHCR, UNICEF, DRC, UNFPA the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

More than 20 tombstones were destroyed at an Orthodox cemetery in Lipljan in Kosovo. The head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo Jan Braathu visited the site and condemned the actions. As of 12:45am EST (6:45am Kosovo time), the US Embassy in Kosovo has not reacted.

Meanwhile, two Kosovo Serbs arrested on suspicion of espionage were released. Kosovo Police says they took documents pertaining to Serbs in two municipalities.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic headlined the premier of a film profiling controversial General Ante Gotovina. The historic amphitheater held the 66th annual Pula Film Festival. Gotovina is most well-known for his role in the 1995 Operation Storm.

Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was duped in April by the same Russian duo that pranked N. Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev. Russia 24 recently released a part of the phone call to with the fake Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Meanwhile, Zaev says that N. Maceodnia will continue its friendship with Russia after meeting with Russian Ambassador to Skopje Sergey Bazdnikin.

Albania will grant funds to the Albanian National Council in Montenegro, according to Minister of Foreign Affairs Gent Cakaj.

“Serbia plans to borrow billions of euros from China and other foreign countries in the coming years to fund investment in regional projects, its infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic said on Friday.” (Reuters)

Former Yugoslav and Croatian intelligence official Josip Perkovic was transferred from Germany to a prison in Croatia. He is i n prison for the murder of political emigrant Stjepan Djurekovic in 1983.

Convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic was treated in a Hague hospital according to his son, Darko. He has been in the custody of the ICTY since June 2011. He previously had heart trouble.

Slovenian Istria, comprising of the Piran, Koper, Portorož and Ankaran municipalities, will compete to be the 2025 European Capital of Culture under the slogan “Piran-Pirano 4 Istria 2025.”

After a pilot program last summer in Dubrovnik, Chinese uniformed police officers will return to Dubrovnik as well as patrol in Zagreb, Zadar and Plitvice National Park. Over 250,000 Chinese tourists visited Croatia last year.

There were twice as many deaths as births in the Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska in the first quarter of 2019.

“The Croatian Justice Ministry sent Bosnia and Herzegovina a request for the extradition of former Dinamo football club executive Zdravko Mamic after the Osijek County Court forwards the necessary documentation to the justice ministry. The Osijek County Court on Friday upheld a new indictment which the Office for Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) filed against Mamic and six more people on the suspicion that they had defrauded Dinamo of 200 million kuna from 2004 to December 2015 when Mamic held a few executive posts in that Zagreb-based football club.” (Sarajevo Times)

BEYOND THE POLITICS

“Kosovo, the global far right, and the threat to liberalism“by Loic Tregoures for European Council on Foreign Relations

Serbian basketball player who formally played in the NBA and currently plays for Red Star Belgrade Ognjen Kuzmic was involved in a severe car accident in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We wish him a quick recovery.

Former Yugoslav national soccer team player and current manager of Bologna in Italy Sinisa Mihajlovichas been diagnosed with acute leukemia.

In more positive news, Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic won the 2019 Wimbledon Men’s Single Championship. It is his 16th grand slam and 5th Wimbledon victory.

Serbian basketball player Alen Smailagic is learning how to trash talk by his new teammate DeMarcus Cousins.

Koko the chimpanzee has returned to the Skopje Zoo after ten years in the Netherlands after being treated for depression.