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BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Nov. 16 (UPI) Czech President Vaclav Havel has offered a place for Yugoslav oppositionists in his country's delegation at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit in Istanbul Thursday, news reports in Belgrade said Tuesday.
Havel's spokesperson Vladislav Spacek said Havel had invited Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic and Serbian opposition leaders to join the Czech delegation and take part in the summit. He added that it was because of the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that Yugoslavia was not invited to participate in the OSCE's work.
Havel said Yugoslavia should be represented by its democratic forces in meetings planned by the OSCE.
The strongest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), is discussing a proposal that its leader, Vuk Draskovic, urgently schedule a public meeting of the democratic opposition in Serbia, Draskovic's political adviser Ognjen Pribicevic told local reporters.
Pribicevic said in an interview that the SPO had received an invitation for discussion from Social Democracy leader Vuk Obradovic and that the party would certainly consider it.
However, said Pribicevic, it is essential that first Alliance for Change rallies throughout Serbia must come to an end because they are squandering the energy of the Serbian people.
AFC representative Milan Protic has told media the coalition welcomes the announcement from the SPO but that it remains to be seen whether this party will actually reverse its current policy of passivity.
Payment operations between Serbian and Montenegrin businesses are being conducted in foreign currencies, Belgrade radio B2-92 quoted Serbian Chamber of Commerce officials as saying Tuesday.
They said Serbian-based firms operating in Montenegro were paying for supplies and billing their customers in foreign currency, which they were holding in branch offices of Serbian banks in Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital.
Officials emphasized that it was most important to businesses in the two republics to be able to work, even under Serbia's current ban on official payment operations, because some industries such as aluminum production that operated in Montenegro did not exist in Serbia.
More ethnic Albanians are to be released from Serbian prisons in the course of this week, according to the director of the Human Rights Foundation Natasa Kandic.
She said Tuesday her organization had been told that 110 ethnic Albanians would be released, but the International Red Cross reported Monday that only 47 prisoners were set free.
Kandic said the ethnic Albanians had been released after the public prosecutor had dropped charges for lack of evidence.
Those released had spent several months in prisons in Leskovac and Zajecar after being charged with various criminal offenses, including terrorism.