 I'm really very pleased and proud to be here today. It's kind of honour for me and I have to say I've already put the announcement from your website on my Facebook, it is kind of honour really. I would like to thank also the Art Hawk International Coalition to arrest Radkom Ladic that actually helped me to come here today and who lobbied for my presentation both today and the other one which I'm going to deliver the day after tomorrow in the parliamentary committee for the European Affairs. Just on that we should thank Valerie Hughes who is with us as always because she has a lot to do with this and we almost take Valerie's contribution for granted because she provides us with interesting names and interesting opportunities so thanks for that sorry. I'm really really deeply convinced that their work along with the persistency shown by the Netherlands government and your parliament and in persisting to keep the issue of arrest of Radkom Ladic higher in the agenda really contributed to the fact that Serbia finally arrested not only Radkom Ladic but another remaining fugitive Goran Hadric and that they are now safely in the ICTY which is really a good news coming from Serbia. Nevertheless this is not the end of business and end of the road this is just the fact that we have removed one big roadblock on our path towards the EU and this is what I'm going to talk about today. I suppose that most of you are familiar more or less with the findings of the European Commission presented in their progress report for Serbia in year 2000 for year 2010. I will shortly remind you about that. I will then speak in a little bit more details on some issues that I think haven't been so far so thoroughly covered by the Commission and my suggestion is that they should as well and how these issues particularly the gaps in the security sector reform in Serbia influence some important issues that I then again suggest and offer to European commissions and member states to consider while they deliberate whether Serbia should be granted candidacy status or not. So these three issues that are actually influenced by the gaps in Serbian security reform are genuine willingness and commitment of Serbia to regional reconciliation and then further cooperation, its willingness and capability to exchange policies towards Bosnia and Kosovo. But first let me remind you on some main findings of the European Commission for Serbia. Overarching problems are poor law enforcement in Serbia. That is a huge, persistent problem that actually affects many other topics in Serbia which is of course by still developed and fragile institutions of course. Another big problem that the European Commission highlights is corruption and the fight against organized crime. The Commission actually highlights as a topic that should be continued but they have even some compliments for the achievements made so far. With regard to the fight against corruption I would say that maybe the European Commission tends to be sometimes too legally optimistic and that the solutions it offers tends to be let's introduce more and more regulatory body or more and more agencies instead of maybe being more focused on what's going on with the laws that have been adopted so far whether they are implemented properly, whether all remaining bylaws and additional acts that enable actually their usage are in place. Of course after the last year's Serbian big failure in the Permanent Court of Justice and the agreement between our president Boris Dadić and high representative Ms. Gettineston, the issue of negotiation with Pristina became a part of the Commission conditionality for this year's report. This is something that our politicians conveniently tend to forget when they explain to Serbians what are expectations from the EU. Sometimes they present them as new additional unexpected conditions which then affect Serbian public support for the EU integration and I think this is not a good news. Of course another overarching problem is severely challenged judicial reform. The process of judicial reform in Serbia has started I would say in 2006 and 2007 and at that time the EU member states and the EU institutions were just tiptoeing around Kostunica, our former prime minister Boris Kostunica government for not making military intervention once Kosovo declares its independence. So they were at the time willing to turn a blind eye on the quality and substance of this judicial reform and then it kind of kicked us all back and I think the European Commission ever since year 2009 has more clear and objective saying on where the problem is what should be done now some of the laws are called off new proposals are considered the processes kind of back on track but still it is an early stage and there is really room for much more job there is a need for that. So I will speak today in more detail on the gaps in Serbian security sector reform and when I refer to security sector I don't refer only to armed forces I refer to police, to customs, to intelligence services and to Department of Justice as an overall body so to say and of course private security agencies. A lot of progress have been done in these fields I mean sometimes we tend to be very critical but and to forget where we started from you know and we started from I think a huge war crime perpetrators in our ranks when we got to power in year 2000 and there are some things that we should always bear in mind when we evaluate progress in Serbian security sector reform. I will now briefly highlight some circumstances that give the context in which these security sector reform has been conducted so far apart from the huge war crimes backlog I mean these crimes are committed by somebody and these are mostly still in our ranks unfortunately and other I think circumstance that shapes the condition in which Serbian security sector reform are conducted is the fact that contrary to other Eastern European countries in 90s and contrary to most of the countries of the western Balkans these days Serbia is not in the process of NATO integration. You reason Sanomero's but nevertheless this process of NATO integration actually played a complementary role to the process of EU integration for these countries covering some security sector reform aspects because also maybe it is easier to become a member of NATO as you know or still you have to meet some requirements related to security sector and NATO integration process was guidelines in that aspect for other countries of the Eastern Europe and Western Balkans with Serbia this is not the case. Still there have been some progress recently in terms of introducing some NATO standards in our armed forces but these standards are more related to capabilities and this kind of military businesses but they are not related to the civilian and democratic control for example of the system and better system is well embedded and better the legislation of the different fields of sectors harmonize and so on and so on. There are several individual countries efforts to help us reduce the number of troops we got this year finally a professional army which is a good news we significantly downsized it and it became professional leaders in these assistance on Norway and United States and there are some intergovernmental organizations like the OAC that are pushing for some other aspects of reforms in other sectors of the security sector mostly in the police they have helped us introduce more multi-ethnic police for example in the southern parts of Serbia they helped Serbia educate and train police staff to be more sensible towards some challenging issue and so on but still experts say that comprehensive reform in the Serbian police hasn't started yet nevertheless Serbian police officials were very keen and efficient in implementing all the legislation and conditions needed for Serbia to get a visa free regime with the EU which is also a good news. Nevertheless there is room for much more torof and in-depth reforms unfortunately the EU Commission gives just a small portion of its report to this very important topic and they found out that the democratic oversight particularly of the military agencies is something that can be improved of course the EU Commission does cover many important aspects of the security sector one way or another I have already mentioned they are now finally properly involved in Serbian judiciary reform they cover up what's going on in police they are supporting and demanding actually a stronger role of the Serbian Parliament in the oversight of the forces and agencies but there is no comprehensive approach as we have in for example fight against corruption or in agriculture etc and I think that this is the missing link that the EU can bridge by combining more torofly its enlargement policy with its common security and defence policy and other I think positive development in Serbia these days is willingness of Serbian government to take part in several EU led missions around the world along with some UN missions this is another chain channel for communication and for improved involvement of the EU in this respect nevertheless the problem is personnel as I have already said we have downsized our professional army but it was based on conscript but the ranks commanding ranks are still the same more or less same goes for the police for the intelligence agencies I openly stated that the ICTI the Hague Tribunal was the best reformer of the Serbian security sector so far simply because thanks to the existence of the ICTI and our obligation to cooperate with it we delivered at least some of the corporates there and removed them from the structure others if they have retired they ended up in pretty controversial political parties still very nationalistically oriented or are in a very poorly regulated private security sector in Serbia another issue that I think the European Commission and member states should pay a proper attention to it is not only my remark expert organizations like the Geneva Center for Democratic Control of Armed Forces OSE and many other reputable organization who are dealing with these topics find the problem of very poorly regulated security sector in Serbia as a big one again bearing in mind the fact that some of their members have a very very nasty so to say background and due to their participation in wars in 90s. Serbia as you know presented the candidacy bid in year 2009 and then it was obliged to fill in the questionnaire that European Commission provided and I think this questionnaire is very useful material background material for everyone who wants to go into more detail to see better the institution building and strengthening processes working in a good direction etc. Serbian government recognize some problems in control really of military agencies in particular and I think it is a good news that it recognizes the problem but let's see what will happen whether the problem will be resolved as soon there are two schools of thinking so to say why is the reason that Serbian Parliamentary Committee for security and defence affairs was has not been exercising its mandate for so long one school of thinking says that the reason is a lack of the capacity and knowledge of the MPs who are members of this very committee which even under the existing legislation has certain power to oversight not maybe financial aspects of the intelligence agency work but some other aspects yes they it has another school of thinking and I belong to this one is that Serbian ruling elite is not willing to introduce genuine democratic and civic oversight what better they are afraid of it whether they are aware that they will face certain resistance or not this is another issue and that instead of introducing proper democratic and civilian control with the very significant role of parliament and parliamentary committees and very good and stable judiciary they tend to use shortcuts and to impose actually party control of the existing structures which is not the good news the reason I belong to this school of thinking is the fact that until only recently Serbian political parties were honours of the Serbian MPs mandates in parliament so if you are elected to become a member of the parliament in Serbia you are obliged by your party headquarters to submit a blind resignation that the party can use whenever it suits it thankfully due to a very persistent pressure from the EU member states and from the commission this piece of legislation has been recently exchanged which now the situation now is that Serbian MPs have more room to be individuals and to have their own thinking on some affairs despite on what the party headquarters think but this is still a compromising solution because our election legislation and constitution deprived us from introducing better solution but the EU is content with what we have came up with so far and I think that good news is that Serbia only yesterday adopted two very big and important reminding pieces of legislation which the commission presented as a condition related to retribution of private property and ownership of public companies another overarching team that is impeding not only Serbian security sector reform but I would say all other reforms in Serbia is that policy towards Kosovo is dominating everything else in Serbia all other policies in Serbia again judiciary reform and policy over Kosovo these are two more most important I would say contributors to the circumstances in which security sector reform have been going on so far along of course with the presence of so many people who participated in wars in 90s and most likely did commit war crimes so this situation with certain gaps in the security sector reform with the lack of harmonized legislation between certain fields of the security sector along with the overall problem that Serbia has and that is the poor law enforcement is a situation in which some people within the security sector or some political elites through this only form security sector actually contribute most to a Serbian approach towards the region Serbian approach towards the reconciliation and more specifically towards Bosnia and Kosovo I will speak today a little bit more about Serbian policies towards Bosnia and Kosovo because they also in the focus of member states now and the commission related to our candidacy bit but I would like to remind you the data open issues between Serbia and Montenegro as well how Serbia treats the independence of Montenegro how we see their legitimate attempts to create some symbols and and to add to their identity and I think that there is a significant distinction between how Serbia and why Serbia treats Kosovo and Bosnia and who is actually behind the scene towards policy in Montenegro I think that when it comes to Montenegro the church Serbian Orthodox Church nationalistic intellectual elite still have an upper hand virus in cases of Bosnia and Kosovo unreformed security structure and personnel in them it has a leading role and I this is why I would like to highlight how important is to consider the role of security sector reform these days in our policies towards Bosnia and Kosovo simply it is my impression actually that we read and know a bit more on how for example some academia people influence policy towards Bosnia or how nationalistic leaders shape our policy towards Kosovo and that this subject on how these structures and the fact that our security sector reform somehow fall between the cracks of the EU and member states attention contribute to these policies as I have mentioned earlier it is really a big news that that Serbia arrested Radkom Ladic and Goran Hadric but we can't forget the fact that they've been inaccessible to justice for so long and that they did they were arrested at the end of the day in Serbia so I think it would be very dangerous for the credibility of the EU for reconciliation process to put aside the issue of who have been and how supporting Radkom Ladic and others for so long after the initial cheers for Serbia it seems to me that almost every other member state has forgotten about this issue and that the only actor in in a public arena who speaks properly about it is again ICT vibe and they are current chief prosecutor Mr. Serj Graveric it is very important that I think that it is very important that he receives support by the Commission and and by European Council and member states for his demands that Serbia has to come out with the facts about that he reiterated only few days ago in Belgrade that this is not a new condition as I have already mentioned Serbian leading elite tend to present some of the existing condition as a new conditions that something very unfair is happening against Serbia that everyone who is against us is kind of introducing new and new conditions where Mr. Bramert said very frankly that this is a part of Torov and full cooperation with ICT why and that it assumes that Serbia should investigate who and how have been supporting Radkom Ladic for so long in that respect I would like to to inform you that I think the role of the United States can sometimes be controversial they are a minister of foreign the state secretary Mr. Clinton during her visit to Serbia said that the best part of bilateral relation between Serbia and United States is military cooperation and all all evidences point to the direction that the military was the agent of provision of support of shield for Radkom Ladic and and Hadric and others so it and of course they boost up our current minister of foreign defense to I think a level which he doesn't deserve simply because of these elephant in the room he recently immediately after the arrest he announced very short internal investigation so the army investigated itself whether it supported Radkom Ladic or not and these investigation lasted like for 10 days and they announced that according to them they didn't have any kind of contacts with ICT why fugitives ever since year 2002 this is a little bit controversial and I I think that the European Commission should bear that in mind and persist on external and more Torov investigation into that this fact I think impedes Serbian genuine approach towards regional reconciliation for me attitude towards the ICTI acceptance of the rulings of the ICTI are the best indicators of Serbian commitment to the regional cooperation everything else is just lip service without replacement of certain remaining personnel in our ranks and without acknowledgement that it was Serbian institutions not only individuals but institutions at the time who committed all these crimes I think we are not going to make further progress that can be substantial these same structures are more or less creating our policy towards Kosovo in a days before my visit to the island a lot have been going in North Kosovo and the Western international community speculating to what is the level Serbian belgrade controls events in North Kosovo or whether these events are self driven or controlled by Serbian opposition the trigger for the chain of events which have started in July this year was the attempt of the Kosovo police service and EU civilian mission in Kosovo LX which is in charge for the implementation of rule of law was their attempt to try and to replace a Serbian members of the Kosovo police service with another shift again with serbians but with another shift and there is it's a public knowledge that most of Serbian's members of the Kosovo police service are actually in the same time communicated with Serbian ministry of interior in Belgrade and either they rejected order to step back or actually they fulfill the orders by Serbian ministry of interior to reject Kosovo police service and EU LX attempt to make the shuffle so this is something that shouldn't be forgotten god bless Vicky Lix I know that it is embarrassing in many aspects but once when it is out there it is really very useful I recently read that our minister of defense in year 2007 said that he thinks that there are at least 200 active members of Serbian police that should be monitored and that they actually have a very very long and heavy crack record of their activities in Kosovo and that they are still in service so I think that policy in Kosovo is not only dominated by meets by Serbian rejection to assume some kind of responsibility for the events of 98 99 etc etc but that right now when it is whether we shall get a candidacy status or not that it is now heavily influenced by those who are afraid of Serbian further progress towards the EU because they understand that that will mean a stronger better institutions and that more access to justice in the forthcoming period and more hopefully control over the security sector and it is them beating the military intelligence within military security structure civilian intelligence agency in police who are drastically shaping our policy I hear some comments over there let me give you another example confirmation of my thesis on October the second Serbia should gay activists in Serbia are going to try to organize yet another pride parade there were three failure attempts in year 2001 2004 and 2009 I think and we managed to organize one last year but the the turmoil that was the violence that was created by nationalist organizations and they are units which I call paramilitary units was really threatening and unfortunately our judiciary and prosecution bodies have failed to synchronize their work and only just a handful of those perpetrators were arrested and now our minister of interior uses the security concerns as the biggest argument against this year parade instead of providing security and going after those who've been seen on cameras that they were committing violence they say that the people who want to organize the parade are those who are creating insecurity and tensions in society unfortunately several syndicates of Serbian police gave statements in recent days stating that they don't want to assist in provision of security for the members of the parade which is against their job description and some experts for security in Serbia tend to call it crawling crew that there is actually no structured message that can be sent from the top below that they reject their obligations which is a very sensible issue I think that the international community also should pay attention to on roadblocks nowadays in North Kosovo I suppose that you are all familiar with what's going on I dare say that right now Serbian government do not control all the aspects and can't simply control all the events in North Kosovo but it is no doubt responsible for not trying to explain to citizens of North Kosovo in advance what is most likely going to happen and what conditions for the Western international community going to be I think that recent visit of German Chancellor Miss Angela Merkel to Serbia was very useful for Serbia it came as a shock to some and I think that whoever admitted that it was shocked for them should resign from their jobs whether they were journalists or analysts or statesmen because she actually didn't say nothing new she just put it together and phrased it properly and directly she called off for the dismantle of parallel structures but she never referred to health and educational structures so I think it is very important to send this message to people in North Kosovo that they would still remain linked to Serbia at least through these two services that she was referring only to those services who are giving kind of sovereignty to to impose the rule of law on Bosnia situation is I would say still very complex Serbian official position is of course that we highly respect and cherish the unity of Bosnia and Herzegovina while in reality it is not always the case of course that the rest of Radkom Ladić is good step ahead of cause that visit of our president Mr. Tadić to Srebrenica last year was a welcome guest but still there are too many dots when connected which can maybe indicate that our policy towards Kosovo has one phase for the international public another actually phase in reality our minister of interior only recently recommended partition on Kosovo and Bosnia as a resolution of current style made in consolidation of democracies in the region and oddly enough or not he was not warned or sanctioned by our either prime minister or president our minister on foreign affairs met president of Republic of Srebrenica this is just one entity of the age on several occasions in presence of third party statesmen without representatives of federation okay we can't expect to have representatives of the federal state if the government is not in place but nevertheless but we also should think about why are irration and intelian governments ready to make this kind of gestures as well our minister of defense really very well placed and seen as a reformer among Americans commented first instance sentence of general Perishic which was delivered let's say a month ago in the ICTY he was the commander of Serbian army at the time that we should stop trials in Hague he was not referring to new indictments we all know that there are no going to be new indictments but he was very directly referring that we should terminate all the existing trials that they are just confusing public and contributing to a less reconciliation not too more and don't forget it is not just the trial against Karadzic that is already ongoing and the trial now against Mladic it is also trial against two notorious heads of Serbian intelligence service during the wartime Simatovic and Stanisic and the findings in these two cases can severely compromise some of the characters in Serbian still active in Serbian ranks of the security sector now that would be yes in a minute against all this information that I have provided one would say well Serbia doesn't deserve candidacy status there are so many open issues but I think and I'm really deeply convinced that Serbia should be given the candidacy status and then that the the date of negotiation should be very very totally conditioned and well articulated along with that the role of the EU in this period the interest of the EU should be much bigger it should not really reduce to Kosovo as a political aspect and technicalities when I say technicalities I prefer to adoption of laws firstly it will if Serbia does not get a candidacy status it would severely affect the public support for the EU integration it is already just slightly above 40 percent okay it is understandable this is a process of transition and EU integration combined that already lasts for so long and the economic crisis contributed to that and our disputes with the EU on Kosovo etc without public support I doubt that even those parties who are in favor of the EU integration can do a lot and then we would actually lose all connection with the EU and then the EU would lose leverage over us the best leverage that EU has despite the financial crisis and sovereign debt is actually money I would say so I think that Serbia should be given a candidacy status of course if something very nasty don't happen in the forthcoming period either in Belgrade during the pride parade or in North Kosovo and of course if the talks this new round of talks between Belgrade and Pristina which are scheduled for today go in in a good direction I think that this would be also useful for the EU I think that EU still has to convince some other global players that it is capable of transforming certain region and bring it to stability in full and that good closure and one good success story as the western Balkans can contribute to the EU position in the world arena particularly bearing in mind recent events in north Africa and in Middle East thank you very much for your attention I am now really willing to answer all the questions you may ask as long as I'm capable