Ministry of defence Republic of Serbia
 
27.01.2011.

Интервју министра Шутановца за магазин "Економист"



NO ONE HAS PROMISED THE GOVERNMENT RECONSTRUCTION

The citizens of Serbia do not expect empathy, they do not care whether you show understanding for their problems or not, simply they want a solution, however it is the media which have made a story about the possible reconstruction of the cabinet. I do not expect that the government will be formed with the Progressives, it would not be natural or good for the country. Small parties have a large blackmailing capacity, and that of the Serbian Progressive Party would so burdensome that the state would not be able to support it.

"By signing a 400 million dollars worth of contract to build three plants in North Africa, we managed to fulfill the promise for the domestic defense industry to conclude one billion USD worth of business contracts. The contracted works exceeded one billion and 200 million USD during my term in the office," said in an interview to Economist Dragan Sutanovac, defense minister. That the military industry during the crisis has proved to be one of the best export sectors can be seen in the fact that in 2009 and 2010 it earned nearly half a million USD, thus ensuring the salaries for more than 9,000 workers in seven factories of the defense industry.

Possible jobs with Kuwait have drawn the attention of the public, not only because of 235 million dollars as a sum mentioned in the public, but also because there is a possibility that the job would involve the defense industry factories in former Yugoslav republics. "Kuwait has expressed a wish to overhaul and modernize 149 tanks type T-84, purchased from Yugoslavia in the early nineties. Some time ago, Yugoimport SDPR presented the Kuwaiti army with an advanced version of the T-84, they were satisfied and today we are negotiating about the agreement. The potential value of this deal is about $ 450 million, but this is difficult to predict whether this job is certain or not. If it is concluded, defense industries outside Serbia, in the former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia or Slovenia, but also in some European Union countries may be engaged as well. The contract with Kuwait would be a commercial one, and anyone who would like to work with us, would have to offer the right price, quality and to meet the delivery deadlines", says defense minister.

It's no secret that the defense industry was in a seriously bad condition, almost facing the bankruptcy. What happened in the meantime that restored the defense industry to make 1 billion EUR worth of contracts?

- The fact is that our defense industry was completely destroyed after 1999. It was partially restored after that, but there was no vision, no plans for the development of these factories. In 2007 we made a plan that was to result in our defense industry engaging its maximum capacity making our defense products in demand on the world market. The largest part of the product is the so called "political product" meaning it requires political approval of the countries we are exporting our products into, because without such consent it s not possible to conclude contracts. We managed to position ourselves in countries where political support is important, by employing our military diplomacy, but also by offering good quality products, by meeting the deadlines and all this at competitive prices. In the past three years, most products were exported to Iraq, some 300 million USD worth, then in the U.S., worth about 85 million, mainly ammunition. The third country is Afghanistan with about 30 million USD worth of exports , and then come EU countries such as Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Cyprus, African countries and the countries of the Middle East, Libya, Kuwait ...

Does our defense industry have the support here in the country, are there any direct financial incentives, since it has been shown that there is export potential
- The defense industry exports about 93 percent of all goods produced. Unfortunately, the internal support is not at the level of potential, because there is not so much money. There some financial support given to the factory "Zastava Arms". This company is in serious trouble and was not restructured adequately, because it has more employees than it really has work, and too many of them are mangers, not in production. The state has subsidized loans and the financial help to the factory, and the Ministry of Defense will grant certain finds from the budget in advance, in order to purchase equipment that will enable them to operate at a higher capacity.

The last class of conscripts was sworn in December. Does this mean a formal end to the process of military reform?
- Reforms are a never-ending process, all armies in the world are constantly undergoing them. When the last class of conscripts ends their service , the process of professionalization will be finalized, which marks a landmark in the reform of all the armies in the world that underwent the process. At present, apart from Serbia and Sweden, which has done a few months ago, as of 1 July Germany will too have a fully professional army, and in Austria there is a big debate on how to accomplish this with the given budget. After completion of professionalism, we are faced with fine tuning, which involves correcting the mistakes we have made along the way. This is followed by promoting the military profession.

How much will professional soldiers of the SAF earn? Is there, given the crisis in which the economy has found itself and a chronic shortage of money in the budget, any room for increasing the salary of military personnel?
- The standard of living of the military men is not as high as I would like it to be, a soldier with a minimum wage earns less than 300 euros. But it is only the base salary and, if participating in regular activities, such as duty, field work and being sent off to the security zone, the salary can be increased by 50 percent to around 450 euros per month. These are solid earnings. Professionals in the Army, in accordance with the act, have a fixed salary, but also there different kinds of remunerations. This is why the salary of a high ranking officer is often higher than the salary of a minister.

How many employees of the Ministry of Defense and the Serbian Armed Forces lost their jobs during the reform including officers, NCOs, civilians? How much did the resettlement program cost?

- Since I took the post of the minister, only a part of employees in the military and income-based institutions accepted the resettlement program. These institutions instead of generating income were making losses, and this number included a number of technical and repair institutes, which also had huge losses. In the army itself, except for the natural outflow of those who are retired or who wanted to leave the army, there were no layoffs. In the past three years we managed to stabilize the personnel map thus making a fine HR pyramid., which was one of the most challenging parts of any reform, because this army has been downsized to the necessary numbers.
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After the professionalization will the Serbian soldiers be more engaged in combat units in international missions? Have you discussed this with NATO representatives?

- Participation in peacekeeping missions is not defined in combat missions. Members of the Serbian Armed Forces are currently deployed in five UN missions and our goal is that after the signing of the Security Agreement with the EU in the coming months, our military, for the first time in history, will take part in missions with the EU. At the beginning there will be a small number of officers, and later we plan to increase that number.

- This is election year and some of your colleagues in the Government have warned that there is great discontent among the citizens and that the Government should get its act together. Do you sense this frustration when you go out into the street?


- For three and a half years as the minister, in conversations with people I have never had a single negative situation. However, I feel that there is energy that can easily turn into a negative energy, that does not have a positive attitude even towards positive things. Even for things that 80 percent of the population declared as positive, such as, for example, professionalisation, today we see that the majority of blogs have negative comments.

Nevertheless, I expect the people in the next election to vote for those who offer them a solution of our current problems and not for those who exaggerate them, and offer no solutions. Unfortunately, I have not yet heard from the opposition what it is they offer. The last idea they presented to the public, is to halve the number of MPs, and, in my opinion, this would drag Serbia into even greater turmoil and trouble. This would virtually strike out all minorities representatives in the Parliament, resulting in a policy that is anachronistic in comparison to what we stand for, that is, the European integration and European values. So I expect that this year is, so to say, the crown of the government that when everything difficult and unpopular would be finally made clear to the citizens why this is so.

You mean, You expect them to vote for the project Serbia 2020?
-Probably.

Despite the fact that not much of what has been promised has been fulfilled?
- I am fascinated with the results of research which shows that during Tito’s reign we lead better lives, or that even, for example, we lived even better "during Milosevic’s regime". It is often forgotten that a decade ago the foreign exchange reserves were at zero level, we bought fuel by the cup and the wage was 50DM.

Maybe we could have done more in the past ten years, but we must be aware that the start was so bad that it made it very difficult. In the Ministry of Defence, I am the eighth minister in the last seven years, if every appointed minister had implemented only a segment of the reforms everything would be different. This is why I believe that government should last the full term, because only then will we see the results.

As things stand at this point, nothing will come out of the possible reconstruction of the government. Will the people see this as an unfulfilled promise? Some may call it demagogy, but it seems that the government does not show even the elementary empathy.
- I think the citizens of Serbia do not expect empathy from the government. They do not care if you have understanding for their problem or not, they simply want a solution. On the other hand, no one has promised the reconstruction of the Government, except for the fact that it was the media which turned this into a topic.

President Tadic has said he would talk about the reconstruction after the New Year, but no talks are happening. He also said he would "draw the line," and that ministers who had poor results would have to be accountable for what they did, and nothing of this happened.
- I would like to see where it was said so, and I often hear that I said something I did not. I expect that in January the coalition leaders and signatories to the coalition agreement will sit down and talk about reconstruction. It is certainly not a topic that needs to be guided discussed in the media.

Recent disagreements in the coalition have shown that there is a certain degree of disagreement, particularly about changes in election laws. Do you think you should change this part of the legislation, since it would solve the issue of blank resignations, an issue the EU insists so much on?
- Blank resignation, as the remains of the past which have been placed under suspicion ands it is high time they were canceled. My opinion is that Serbia has to change the electoral system in order to make essential decentralization and in order for the citizens to be able to influence the local level in the local government, provincial or Republic. This system can be classic-neither majority based or combined as in Vojvodina, since a proportional electorate system-even though I understand what our coalition partners are trying to say - apparently does not allow citizens to have control over their representatives, or for their representatives to have any greater impact. That is the essence of the majority-based principle to me, even though he is not ideal because as it can happen that a little over 40 % of 196 deputies have absolute power, which is not natural thus making the combined system the best solution.

Deputy Prime Minister and President of the SPS Ivica ?acic claims that the DS has found common ground with the SNS, to thereby eliminate small parties while some senior government officials claim that for Serbia the best solution is the two-party system.
- If we are going to adopt European values and apply them to our country, then we should also standardize our political scene. If some developed democracies have a bipolar political scene, why would someone be afraid of such a scene in Serbia? Realistically, today it is hard to do that but I am not of the opinion that we should go towards EU in a way which is not recognized in the EU. I think we must first secure the majority in the parliament, which would be real, not an irrational majority made of both the ruling and opposition parties.

To be completely open, has the Democratic Party agreed with the SNS about eliminating small parties.
- No it has not.

What about the fact that they have the capacity to blackmail?
- The blackmailing capacity of small parties is small, however the capacity of the Serbian Progressive Party would probably be so great that the state would not be able to withstand it.

Can we expect a large coalition of DS and SNS after the elections?
- I do not expect this to happen. It would not be natural or good for the country. I think the ruling coalition will have the majority support after the next election, and in the end, everything else would be unnatural. After all, if on the basis of the charges went to the bipolar political system, why would come together and create a government?

Much has been said and written about the report submitted by Dick Marty. Does the Military Security Agency's posses any records of Hashim Thaci and what doe it say?
- VBA functions in accordance with its statutory powers and it will provide all necessary information should the investigation require it , which we hope will be opened on the basis of data in the report of Dick Marty.
 
MOD
Ministry of defence Republic of Serbia, Bircaninova 5 street, Belgrade
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