Ridding Yugoslavia of corruption?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Financial Times (London), October 12, 2000, Thursday London Edition 1

Yugoslavia seeks aid for winter fuel imports

By STEFAN WAGSTYL

BELGRADE Yugoslavia is aiming to raise up to Dollars 500m (Pounds 345m)
from donors to help finance imports of fuel and other essentials over the
difficult winter months, according to Miroljub Labus, head of the interim
federal government.

But more important than the final sum is the speed with which aid can be
delivered, Mr Labus said. He was speaking a day after meeting Hubert
Vedrine, foreign minister of France, current president of the EU, and
moments before welcoming BODO HOMBACH, head of the south-east Europe
stability pact, the international community's main vehicle for Balkan aid.
"It is important that this message is heard everywhere. Much better we have
Dollars 100m right now than Dollars 500m in a year's time," said Mr Labus.

Democratic parties had defeated Slobodan Milosevic, the former president,
by promising to end Serbia's isolation in the world. It was now vital that
links were created quickly and that people saw the benefits.

"We took big risks making these promises in the election campaign. Now we
are vulnerable. If the west wants to build stability in the region it must
build stability here," said Mr Labus.

====

The Guardian (London), March 18, 2000

Schroder ally drawn into funding scandal funding

Tony Paterson in Berlin

German state prosecutors yesterday announced that they were investigating a
leading figure in the ruling Social Democratic party on suspicion of
illegal party financing.

BODO HOMBACH, who is currently the EU Balkans coordinator, is suspected by
the state prosecutor's office in Dusseldorf of illictly channelling pounds
100,000 to an election campaign manager for the Social Democrats (the SPD)
between 1994 and 1998.

Mr Hombach is a former close adviser to Gerhard Schroder, who was elected
chancellor in October 1998.

Mr Hombach was a key figure in Mr Schroder's campaign and worked as his
chief adviser in the chancellery until last year.

A staunch advocate of Blairism, he drafted a joint Social Democrat-Labour
policy document with Peter Mandelson last June mapping out the parties'
joint commitment to the politics of a 'Third Way' alternative to the
ideologies of left and right - to the annoyance of the left in the SPD.

'The investigation has only just started,' the prosecutor's spokesman,
Peter Schwartzwald, said yesterday. 'We have reason to suspect that the
money came from Mr Hombach's company. He could face a criminal charge for
breach of trust.'


Louis Proyect
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