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Report from The Indepenent.co.uk/news
Serbia’s Nato envoy Branislav Milinkovic leaps
to his death at Brussels airport
Wednesday 05 December 2012
Serbia’s ambassador to Nato was chatting and
joking with colleagues in a multi-story parking garage at Brussels Airport
when he suddenly strolled to a barrier, climbed over and flung himself to the
ground below, a diplomat said.
By the time his shocked colleagues reached
him, Branislav Milinkovic was dead.
His motives are a mystery. Three diplomats who
knew Milinkovic said he did not appear distraught in the hours leading up to
his death Tuesday night. He seemed to be going about his regular business,
they said, picking up an arriving delegation of six Serbian officials who
were to hold talks with Nato, the alliance that went to war with his country
just 13 years ago.
Belgian authorities confirmed that the
ambassador had killed himself.
“It was indeed a suicide,” said Ine
Van Wymersch of the Brussels prosecutor’s office. She said no further
investigation was planned.
A former author and activist opposed to the
authoritarian regime of Serbia’s former strongman Slobodan Milosevic,
Milinkovic was outgoing, had a warm sense of humor and worked to keep good
ties with ambassadors from other ex-Yugoslav countries, according to
diplomats and acquaintances.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to release details, said they knew
of no circumstances — private or professional — that would have prompted him
to take his own life.
But Milinkovic, 52, had mentioned to
colleagues at diplomatic functions that he was unhappy about living apart
from his wife, a Serbian diplomat based in Vienna, and their 17-year-old son.
One of the diplomats described his death to
The Associated Press, saying she had spoken to a member of the delegation who
had witnessed the leap from the 8- to 10-meter-high (26- to 33-foot-high)
platform.
The diplomats all spoke on condition of
anonymity because they are not permitted by foreign service regulations to
speak publicly to the press.
The death cast a pall on the second day of a
meeting of Nato foreign ministers. Officials said they were shocked by the
news of the death of a very popular and well-liked man.
Nato’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
said he was “deeply saddened by the tragic death of the Serbian
ambassador.”
“As Serbian ambassador to Nato he earned
the respect and admiration of his fellow ambassadors,” he said.
When Yugoslavia was a united country,
Milinkovic worked for a prominent Yugoslav foreign policy think-tank.
But when Milosevic seized power in Serbia in
late 1980s, Milinkovic joined other liberals who opposed the former
strongman’s regime and presented a rare voice of moderation during the era
when much of Serbia was engulfed in nationalist fervor.
He established close ties with international
human rights and other groups and remained active in ‘anti-’groups.
After Milosevic was ousted in 2000, Milinkovic
was appointed Serbia’s ambassador to the Organization for Security and
Co-Operation in Europe, or OSCE, in Vienna.
He was transferred to NATO as Serbia’s special
representative in 2004.
Serbia is not a member of the military
alliance, but Milinkovic was named ambassador after Belgrade joined NATO’s
Partnership for Peace program, which involves neutral states.
The move to join the NATO program had angered
Serbian nationalists, who are now in power.
They have pledged that Serbia will never join
NATO because of the alliance’s 1999 bombing campaign, that forced Milosevic’s
forces to withdraw from Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo.
In 2008, Kosovo declared independence from
Serbia, which has never accepted that loss.
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Milosevic was widely blamed for instigating the ’90s Balkan wars that
followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, conflicts that claimed more than 100,000
lives and left millions homeless.
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At NATO, Milinkovic worked to foster closer
ties with the representatives of all five other nations that gained
independence after the bloody 1991 breakup of the former Yugoslav federation
into Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia.
Relations were still politically charged when
Milinkovic first arrived in Brussels, but they have since improved
drastically.
Two months ago, when Croatia’s ambassador to
Nato was being transferred to Moscow, Milinkovic organized a dinner for all
five of his counterparts and a band played music from all parts of the former
Yugoslav federation.
He is survived by his wife and son.
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Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/serbias-nato-envoy-branislav-milinkovic-leaps-to-his-death-at-brussels-airport-8385937.html
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