Byzantine Blog

Why is Solana-Tadic Pact Unavailable to the Public?

Tanjug reported that, according to the Brussels' Office for Enlargement of the EU Commission, the Temporary Agreement signed by Tadic's party members in Luxembourg will be published by the EU only "in the next few months", and that there is a possibility of "technical corrections" in the translation of the document in contrast to the version signed on April 28.

"Certain technical corrections in translation of the signed text may occur", the EU bureaucrats told Tanjug "without clarifying what this actually means", the Tanjug reporter said.

The responsibility for the translation of the Temporary Agreement into Serbian lies on the Serbian side, but this version is being double-checked by the legal and linguistic experts of the European Commission and returned for corrections. The final version of the document in English will be published by the EU "in the next few months", the EU officials said.

Temporary Agreement was the second document Tadic's DS members signed in addition to the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA). Temporary Agreement is shorter than the SAA and, according to the EU officials, "it serves to enable the implementation of the trade part of the Agreement prior to its ratification which, within the EU, could take up to two years".

The EU officials have also confirmed to Tanjug that, contrary to Tadic's claims, not a single line of the SAA and the Temporary Agreement signed by DS is active now, nor will it be implemented before the EU Council of Ministers reaches a decision that Serbia has fulfilled the condition of finalizing the cooperation with the Hague.

Government Does Not Adopt Documents of Unknown Contents

Reacting to Tadic's announcement that the ministers belonging to his coalition will request government adoption of the Solana-Tadic pact, alongside the adoption of the Russian energy deal, scheduled for Friday, May 9, Premier Kostunica said he will not take part in the deception, since the DSS-NS [Kostunica's coalition] ministers are entirely unaware of the full contents, including the possible amendments to the two documents Tadic's party signed with Solana in Luxembourg.

Prime Minister Kostunica said that the original contracts signed by Bozidar Djelic on April 28 in Luxembourg have not been submitted to the Government of Serbia and that the ministers cannot consider adopting the contracts they are not fully familiar with, and certainly not based on someone's word.

Kostunica said it is unclear why the signed contracts have not been made available to the ministers and the public and how was it possible for these contracts to be kept hidden from the government and public.

"A case like this is unprecedented in the course of Serbian Government activities, as well as in the work of any other European state. However, sooner or later the real reasons for hiding the originals of the signed contracts will become clear," Kostunica said.

Kostunica also said that the government had never adopted a document contents of which were unknown to a number of ministers.

“Not only does Solana Agreement represent a deceit and signing away on Kosovo independence, but Tadic-Djelic signature was also put on an accompanying document that we have yet to see,” the prime minister cautioned.

He said that none of the ministers from the Democratic Party of Serbia-New Serbia (DSS-NS) coalition had seen the Temporary Agreement which had accompanied the SAA Tadic and Djelic have signed.

“And now we hear that the [Tadic's] DS will try to present that agreement, which no one has yet seen, at the next cabinet meeting,” Kostunica said.

He said that Serbian citizens had to know that this was a case of “trying to pull off a grand hoax, and this is an agreement which goes directly against the state and Serbia’s national interests.”

“All this goes to show that, when one is dealing with deceit, one falls ever deeper into big mistakes,” surmised Kostunica.

Slippery Slope: Tadic's DS Plunging Headlong Into Disaster

DSS spokesman Andreja Mladenovic has also called on Tadic and Djelic to make the originals of the documents they signed public.

“The public has to know why are they hiding the Temporary Agreement and if there are any new amendments and annexes to the SAA,” Mladenovic said, adding that Tadic and Djelic were for some reason hiding both the Temporary Agreement and Solana’s SAA, which they signed in Luxembourg.

Mladenovic said that Tadic's party had claimed that it could not show that document to the public "because it was in a special electronic format."

“Then, how was that Temporary Agreement signed in the first place, if it is in a 'special electronic format', unknown to the public,” the DSS spokesman wondered.

“We call on Tadic and Djelic to say what are they trying to hide and where have they hidden the temporary agreement. Not only is it against the Constitution, but it’s downright bullying to request adoption of an illegal document that ministers and the public still haven’t seen,” Mladenovic said, adding that the DS “was plunging headlong into complete ruin and would bear full responsibility for this unconstitutional act.”

Cartoon by Milenko Kosanovic—edited