American Govt Employee Tries To Off Serb Prez.

[Dru]

I bet this hasn't gotten much play in the local news

Tadic 'assassination attempt’ said to be road rage

 

ISN SECURITY WATCH (02/12/04) - Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic said late yesterday evening that the apparent assassination attempt against Serbian President Boris Tadic had been a simple “traffic accident” provoked by a local employee of the US embassy in Belgrade. “What had been feared to be an assassination attempt has turned out to be a traffic offense,” Jocic told a late-night press conference in Belgrade. The minister's intervention came after Tadic's office had issued a statement calling the Tuesday incident an "assassination attempt". Jocic said the security department of the US embassy in Belgrade had informed him late yesterday evening that one of its long-time employees, Serbia and Montenegro citizen Miroslav Cimpl, had accidentally hit one of the cars in Tadic’s motorcade on Tuesday. According to Cimpl's story, relayed to the police by the US embassy, the incident occurred after he left his children at a birthday party and was driving on the downtown Belgrade Kneza Milosa avenue. Unaware that he was behind a presidential convoy “he began to maneuver his vehicle, but when he saw the flashing lights of the motorcade, he got scared and that was how the incident happened”, Jocic said. Cimpl was detained for 48 hours and due to give his statement to Serbian police investigators. Beta news agency quoted an unnamed State Department official in Washington as confirming that one of its employees had caused the incident. A hypothesis of the Tadic assassination, launched by his cabinet and relayed by the press, had stirred international and Serbian public opinion. The Tuesday incident occurred a year and a half after the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was shot dead in March 2003 by an alleged mafia sniper. Prior to Jocic’s press conference, EU Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana and NATO officials in Brussels expressed their concern about the “attack”, while all Serbian parties condemned it strongly. Some politicians, including those of Tadic's Democratic Party, openly linked the Tuesday incident to the Djindjic murder. But the latest clarification of the story and the denial of an assassination attempt provoked a harsh reaction in the Serbian press, criticizing Tadic’s cabinet and some of his political allies of “over-reacting” and “politicizing” the case. Jocic said security around Tadic has been beefed up after the accident, but criticized him for having refused police security in the past, opting instead for special army unit protection. The special army unit, according to Jocic, is not specifically trained for these kinds of operations, nor is it directly linked to the police communications system, which had allowed Cimpl to flee from the scene of the accident. (By Aleksandar Mitic in Belgrade)