13. 08. 2002

Former Deputy Prime Minister Sues Paper

BELGRADE, August 8, 2002- The president of the Movement for a Democratic Serbia, Momcilo Perisic, will file criminal charges against daily Nacional over claims that he had given military information to the German intelligence service. Perisic is claiming ten million dinars (about 165,000 euros) in damages after the paper published his photograph on its front page with the caption "General gave secrets to German intelligence service" and the headline "Perisic worked for Germans". The accompanying article claims that in the autumn of 1998, when Perisic was chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army, he passed details about operations in Kosovo to the then German defence minister, Rudolf Scharping. He told media today that the article in the German magazine Konkret quoted by the Nacional's writer gave no grounds for such headlines in Nacional and that there were also inconsistencies between the original article and Nacional's reporting of it. Perisic resigned as Serbian deputy prime minister in March year after being arrested by military security during a clandestine meeting in a motel outside Belgrade with the first secretary of the US embassy.