Torov’s argument for the vital importance – in Serbia’s own interest – of ensuring that the arrest of Radovan Karadžić leads to a real settling of accounts with the past

Srđa Popović comments on an article published in Belgrade newspaper Politika, in which Milan Škulić offers advice on how Karadžić’s defence should be conducted.

As was expected, the elections have spelled the end of Koštunica. The beginning of his end was the decision to wager everything on the card of conflict with the European Union.

Searching for natural decency and wisdom, old thinkers came up with the Noble Savage, the Noble Peasant, and finally the Noble Destitute or Proletarian.

The inability of the European bureaucracy to deal with crisis situations, and to rein in Greek nationalist arrogance and swagger, has only strengthened Greece’s potential for blackmail. 

In Politika’s March 8th issue, Zorica Tomić – presented to the readers as ‘university professor, expert on culture’ – responded to the invitation to help the Serbs find themselves.

The aimlessness of Serbian foreign policy becomes even more evident, if one asks what is understood by the slogan ‘Kosovo is Serbia’ in the sense of sovereignty.

The elections will not determine merely which parties will form the government, but whether violent means to solve political conflicts will finally be discarded.

Today, in the post-Auschwitz world, when it is believed that the price of final solutions is unacceptably high, scientists and patriots who advocate them require greater courage. 

Kosovo is an independent state, and there is not even a theoretical possibility that this fact can be changed.

If that country is firmly committed to a European policy, it is to be expected that its long-term economic growth and development will be determined by movements within the EU. 

The depression and disappointment of those who voted for Boris Tadić does not deserve compassion. It was perfectly clear that one should not vote for Tadić.

We have now returned to anti-fascism, but not because of its values; not because it is a system of values that has defined the modern world; and not because it is a bastion of defence of individual rights against collective ideologies endangering freedom – but in order to flatter a great power.

I think it is good that two options and just these two are emerging. One is reliance on Russia, isolation. The other option stands for modernisation, entry into Europe, cosmopolitanism. 

There are summer days when the great heat prevents those living in high-rise blocks from doing anything useful, and when even air-conditioning is helpless.

Serbia refuses to acknowledge its true territory. It has spent two centuries trying to be elsewhere, and its borders have moved in accordance with this wish south, west and north. 

Ever since Martti Ahtisaari made his plan public, we have been hearing the most unbelievable pronouncements coming from Serbian officials concerning Kosovo’s future status. 

The basic question that this essay seeks to answer is the following: why did Milošević’s nationalist model remain unchanged after [his fall on] 5 October 2000? 

A well-known Belgrade author now living in Germany recalls his personal experience of his Albanian compatriots while growing up and living in Serbia.

The negotiations cannot be started before next year, and it is hard to perceive how they could be finalized in less than four years.

This is the price of the nationalist cogito: the price which, as we know, so-called patriotic poets – these god-given mediators of the national spirit – are happy to pay.

Breaking diplomatic relations with France, Britain, Germany and the United States would harm Serbia more than these states.

I have a certain confidence in the people of Serbia. This is hard, thanks in the first instance to the fact that we are emerging from an immense evil, the responsibility for which lies with society but also with every individual, including ourselves, the two of us now talking to one another.

The economy is developing autonomously, and what constitutes a state is the politicians’ responsibility.

In 1912, when Serbia and its allies headed off to the First Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire, it went to war with two publicly stated war goals. The first goal was expansion to the south, to Kosovo and Macedonia, and the other equally important goal was to getting exit to the Adriatic Sea through northern Albania.

This is the realism I speak for, not to get carried away with emotions, not to get carried away with moralizing, to be aware of this huge battle which is currently taking place and in which we are participating.

Economist Vladimir Gligorov examines the ideas of the European Union and the possible deficiencies in its structure.

In hind-sight it was a major mistake by the international community not to have solved the problem in 1999 once and for all.

What graced Politika in better and more professional times – seriousness and analyticity – in the editorial version of Ljiljana Smajlovic attained the features of tabloid-like plunking, demonizing the regime’s opponents and irresponsible name calling.

Ljubisa Ristic’s gesture of naming the stages after his former partners who were his ideological opponents in the late 90’s was actually a fetishization of his own past. In that sense, the Secerana (Sugarmill) was precursor of a different, much more ambitious fetish town, the one on Mokra Gora.

People were frightened, and it was Kostunica who frightened them. I want to remind you of the speech he gave in the National Assembly, it was frightening.

The decision of the US, and a number of other countries to break with international law, which regards the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states as sacrosanct, and to permit Albanian separatists in Kosovo to declare independence from Serbia was an extraordinary act.