Belgrade: Nation Defeated And Fragmented, ICG Moves On To Next Battlefield

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Beta (Serbia and Montenegro)
January 27, 2006


Crisis Group closes Belgrade office


-“What tycoons? The ICG is financed by the European Union, George Soros, Bill Gates."


BELGRADE – The International Crisis Group is closing its office in Belgrade, while the office chief, James Lyon, will be staying in Belgrade this year, working as a special advisor for the Balkans.

“You should be happy that we are leaving. We are going somewhere where shots are being fired, and our feeling is that there will be no more shot fired here,” Lyon told daily Blic.

He said that that even though the ICG is leaving, he will be staying in Serbia, adding that the tycoons which he has attacked in the past have not scared him away.

“What tycoons? The ICG is financed by the European Union, George Soros, Bill Gates. None of these people ever put pressure on us to deal with a certain topic.
Tycoons can continue to hang around, we are coming, because this is the plan that I relayed to Tadic, Kostunica and Bulatovic. This we know, it is not new information,” Lyon said.

Nicholas White, director of the ICG’s office in Brussels, said that Lyon’s dismissal has to do with having to decrease the number of employees within the context of calming down regional situation.

“I have found no faults in his work.” White said, adding that the closing of the Belgrade office was planned in 2003, but that the change of plans came as a result of the assassination of prime minister Zoran Djindjic.