BETAWEEK (E) May 4, 2000

A Career: Rada Trajkovic

FROM EXTREMIST TO MODERATE POLITICIAN

The Kosovo Serb politician, Rada Trajkovic, took a short while to cross the path from an extreme nationalist criticizing the Slobodan Milosevic authorities for being too lenient on other nations, especially on Kosovo Albanians, to Serbian cabinet minister who accepts, exercises and justifies Milosevic's policies, to a disappointed outcast, to finally becoming the representative of moderate Serbs in the international administration for Kosovo.

A staunch supporter and loyal follower of Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party, Trajkovic used to fiercely and ruthlessly attack corrupt officials in the ruling Socialist and Yugoslav Left parties before joining the "Government of National Unity" of Serbia, accusing them of "selling Kosovo to Albanians, office by office, street by street, settlement by settlement." It was a time when the Radicals acted as the biggest critics of the regime, attracting the votes of the most radical, but also ultranationalist Serbs.

When the Serbian Radical Party joined the Serbian government on March 24, 1998, Trajkovic was appointed Minister of Family and Child Care, which substantially changed her political views.

When NATO made its first serious threat of bombing Yugoslavia over the Kosovo crisis in October 1998, Trajkovic, then a Radical party MP, openly told the Yugoslav Parliament that her party would take advantage of the intervention, "to deal with Albanian terrorists and all spies in the country."

"We'll use NATO's intervention to deal with Albanian terrorists and all those Helsinki committees, independent news media, congressmen and spies, known and unknown alike," Trajkovic said at the time.

In June the same year, she said, "there isn't a single Serb or Montenegrin who would leave Kosovo," and promised to, "remain with her people in Kosovo until a final solution is found." She held on to her stand even after the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police withdrew from the province, having chosen to stay there.

The key event, which turned around not only Rada Trajkovic's political career but her life as well, happened on Nov. 17, 1998, when she suddenly resigned as Serbian cabinet minister following, "disagreements with Radical party officials," and "internal clashes."

"I feel fortunate and content to be leaving. I could go on being minister for another two or three years, but I want to stay honest for good," Trajkovic said and confessed to having been in a long-lasting clash with the party's undisputed leader, Vojislav Seselj.

"An evil will threaten the Serbian people and state unless that man leaves politics. I feel really sorry for the Yugoslav Left and the Socialists for having a man of such caliber and morale in their ranks," Trajkovic said in an interview with the Belgrade-based Studio B television.

Trajkovic was also known to deliver personal insults even to the Radical party vice-president, Maja Gojkovic, who she said was "having a love affair with a leader of the (Albanian) terrorist organization and its spokesman in Koha Ditore newspaper."

Firm in her intent to stay in Kosovo, and following NATO air strikes and the deployment of international KFOR troops in the province, Trajkovic became increasingly close to the Gracanica-based Serb National Council and its leaders Bishop Artemije and Momcilo Trajkovic, dubbed "traitors" by the Socialist and Yugoslav Left parties.

Late last June, she pledged to fight for "the only solution, which until recently appeared insane, and that is Kosovo's division into two entities."

In early 2000, Trajkovic made another unexpected proposal -- that Albanian activist Flora Brovina, sentenced by Serbian authorities to 12 years in prison, be exchanged for Pristina doctor Andrija Tomanovic, abducted by unidentified Albanians in the summer of 1999.

She came under the heaviest fire from Belgrade-based authorities on April 2, when she accepted the post of observer in the Interim Administrative Council of Kosovo, on behalf of the Serb National Council. This caused pro-government news media to label the council "a NATO and terrorist puppet," and "a handful of Quislings."

Trajkovic explained that the decision was a tough one, but aimed at preserving the Serb population in Kosovo.

"It is the Serb community's first show of good will, a hand extended to the world community in a bid to resolve the issue of the Serb community. I feel very comfortable. This is my town, my country. I expect that very soon I'll be arriving at meetings without armored cars and large escorts. This wish of mine will be a big challenge for the international community," she said after the first council session on April 11 in Pristina.

She was born on March 8, 1953, in Merdare village, near Podujevo, on the administrative border between Serbia and Kosovo, in a family of Montenegrin origin.

She finished secondary school in Pristina, where she studied mathematics, before finally opting for medicine.

Upon graduating from the Faculty of Medicine, she began working at the Pristina Clinical Center, where she became head of the otorinolaringology ward. She specialized in throat, nose and ear infections, and did a doctoral thesis on early throat cancer detection.

She was a long-term sympathizer of the Serbian Radical Party and a member of its top leadership, a federal MP, and, finally, a Serbian cabinet minister.

Her husband, Veselin Trajkovic, was also a member of the Serbian Radical Party. After she resigned as family care minister which triggered her expulsion from the party, her husband also left the Radicals and was immediately sacked from the post of dean at Pristina University Faculty of Medicine.

Rada Trajkovic is a member of the National-Political Council of the Church and People's Council in Gracanica, a member of the executive board of the Serb National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, and since April 2, 2000, observer in the Interim Administrative Council of Kosovo.

As a physician she devoted much of her time to opening a new hospital in Gracanica. She was fired from the Pristina-based Faculty of Medicine, which has been moved to Krusevac.

The Christian Democratic Party of Serbia on April 22 said that Rada Trajkovic had become its member in Athens.

She is married to Veselin Trajkovic, with whom she has two daughters, Biljana and Aleksandra, and a son, Dejan.

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