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| Viewing file: Select action/file-type: <a name="newsitem949309286,38265,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Kosovo Serbs Close to Ending Institution Boycott</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Reuters<br>PRISTINA (Reuters) - Leaders of Kosovo's Serb minority are close to a deal with the province's United Nations administration which would end their four-month-old boycott of multi-ethnic institutions. <br><br>Officials from Serb groups and the U.N. mission say an agreement could be sealed within the next week or two, although they also stress several hurdles still have to be overcome. <br><br>``It's about 90 percent done,'' said Father Sava, an Orthodox priest and spokesman for the Serb National Council, which represents Serbs from across Kosovo but opposes Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government. <br><br>Under the deal, Serbs would take part in a new joint administration the U.N. is setting up with local leaders to run Kosovo, although they would not be on board by the time the first departments are due to start functioning Tuesday. <br><br>In return, the U.N. has drawn up a document to address the concerns of the Serbs, many of whom are now grouped together in enclaves, living in fear of the revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians which have plagued Kosovo since June. <br><br>Outrage at the attacks and a feeling the U.N. and the NATO- led KFOR peacekeeping force were being too indulgent with the ethnic Albanian majority were behind the Serbs' pullout last September from Kosovo's main post-war forum for dialogue. <br><br>DEAL WOULD BE BOOST FOR U.N. <br><br>Many Serb leaders have concluded they can gain little by staying on the outside while the U.N. and Albanians get on with running Kosovo. They have come to believe that international officials are serious about helping all communities here. <br><br>``It's normal for us to accept this as a reality and to try to build up institutions together with the international community,'' Rada Trajkovic, another senior member of the Serb National Council, told Reuters. <br><br>Any such agreement would be a significant boost for the U.N.-led administration headed by Bernard Kouchner, the former French health minister, which has been working hard over the past few months to get the Serbs back into the fold. <br><br>It would also help Western governments to counter claims from Belgrade, and sometimes Moscow, that NATO's bombing last year to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians was simply about attacking Serbs and that the West is not serious about building a multi-ethnic Kosovo. <br><br>The Agenda for Co-existence, as the U.N.-drafted document is called, would allow the creation of special committees in Serb areas to liaise with local administrators and make sure concerns about security and freedom of movement are addressed. <br><br>SERBS HOPE FOR OPPOSITION SUPPORT <br><br>U.N. officials and even Serb leaders say the proposal does not amount to the Serbs' original demand for self-governing Serb cantons within Kosovo. But it does assuage many concerns. <br><br>``It is a compromise. It's not everything we intended to have but it is something which is going to meet our basic goal...to help our people,'' Sava told Reuters. <br><br>The new committees would function within the municipal structures set up by the U.N., officials say. <br><br>But the Serbs still need to take a couple of steps before they will nominate a representative to sit in Kosovo's new Interim Administrative Council, overseeing joint administration. <br><br>They will conclude consultations in Kosovo, which they say have been generally favorable so far, and then go to Belgrade in the hope of securing the backing of fellow opponents of Milosevic in Serbia before announcing their final decision. <br><br>The Serbs are braced for a blasting from officials in Milosevic's government who have suggested that cooperating with Kouchner's administration is close to treason. <br><br>Even if the Serbs agree a deal, their support would not be unconditional. They say they would set a time-limit of two or three months, after which they would review their participation. <br><br>``If we don't achieve anything for the Serb community, we can say we reached out our hand to the international community but it doesn't want to help Serbs,'' Trajkovic said.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949309264,64031,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro president: We will not compromise with Serbia</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">January 28, 2000<br>By Steve Nettleton<br>CNN Interactive Correspondent<br><br>PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Unless the government of Serbia soon accepts a proposal that redefines Montenegro's status within Yugoslavia, Montenegro will be forced to pursue independence from Belgrade by the end of the year, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said in an interview with CNN Interactive on Friday. <br><br>"Montenegro will not compromise on its strategic goals," Djukanovic said. "If Belgrade wants to cooperate with us, then there is a chance for the survival of the Yugoslav federation. But if Belgrade wants to continue along the road of conflict with the entire international community, then it is almost certain that Montenegro in the foreseeable future must pursue full independence to realize its strategic, political and economic interests." <br><br>Under Djukanovic, Montenegro -- Serbia's only remaining partner in Yugoslavia -- has moved to distance itself from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. It has established its own border controls, introduced the German mark as a parallel currency to the Yugoslav dinar and built up a powerful police force independent of Belgrade's authority. <br><br>Yugoslavia previously had expelled Montenegro from most federal institutions. It denied Djukanovic's party (the victor of Montenegro's 1998 parliamentary elections) the right to name Yugoslavia's prime minister, and Milosevic appointed his old political ally from Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic. Belgrade effectively cut off all trade links between Serbia and Montenegro. Serbian police have blocked shipments of food to Montenegro. <br><br>Djukanovic expressed concern that Serbia had so far refused to discuss his plan to restructure the country into a "union of states," with each republic maintaining control over its own global affairs, its own monetary system and the military on its territory. <br><br><br>Public opinion divided in Montenegro<br><br>If Belgrade continues to ignore his proposal, Djukanovic said Montenegro would hold a referendum on independence "not later than the end of this year." <br><br> <br>Public opinion in Montenegro is sharply divided on the issue of independence. The latest polls show 32 percent in favor of seceding from Yugoslavia and 30 percent opposed. Another 25 percent say they want to keep Montenegro within Yugoslavia, but only as an equal state in a confederation with Serbia. <br><br>Leaders of Montenegro's Milosevic-allied opposition say Djukanovic has no mandate to call for a referendum. <br><br>"We believe that we should have early parliamentary elections," said Predrag Bulatovic, vice president of the Montenegro Socialist People's Party. "And in those elections, Mr. Djukanovic should say if he is for independence or not. If he wins in those elections, he would be more than welcome to ask for a referendum. He doesn't have the right at this moment to ask for a referendum, even less to push for independence forcefully." <br><br>Belgrade has sent mixed signals on how it would react to a referendum for independence. <br><br>Milosevic said in December that the people of Montenegro have the right to leave Yugoslavia if they vote to do so. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj, an ultranationalist, has said however that any attempt by Montenegro to secede would be "out of the question." Seselj said Yugoslav authorities should intervene to prevent it. <br><br>In early December, the Yugoslav army, loyal to Milosevic, briefly seized control of the airport in Montenegro's capital, Podgorica, one day before the Montenegrin government planned to assume control of the facility. <br><br><br>Can a war be averted?<br><br>If Milosevic sends the army to crush a move by Montenegro toward secession, Djukanovic said his forces would be able to defend the republic. <br><br>"When you have as the head of state a man like Slobodan Milosevic, you can expect to see any evil," Djukanovic said. "He already started four Balkan wars, so it would not be a surprise at all if he showed a readiness to start a fifth one." <br><br>Djukanovic continued: "I still believe that that will not happen, not because Milosevic is going to change his politics, but because I hope that the Yugoslav army has learned something from its previous wars and it will not let itself be manipulated again." <br><br>But if war does erupt, Djukanovic said, "I am confident that the authorities of Montenegro would be able to efficiently protect the state of democracy in Montenegro." <br><br>Asked if he expected military support from the West, Djukanovic said the international community had pledged to provide security in the Balkans. <br><br>"Attacking the democracy and stability of Montenegro is in fact attacking the policy of the European Union and the United States in this region." Djukanovic said. "So I believe that the international community as well as NATO will be called to protect their policy in the Balkans." <br><br><br>A ploy by Milosevic?<br><br>Many political analysts suspect, however, that Milosevic, whose term as Yugoslav president expires in 2001, would be happy to let Montenegro leave the federation peacefully, because that would enable him to rewrite the constitution and possibly cling to power as president of Serbia. <br><br>"I'm sure that this year he will try to destabilize the government of Montenegro, to change the democratic government and to install a government that would be loyal to him -- a government that would provide a dictatorship over Montenegro as well," Djukanovic told CNN Interactive. <br><br>"As he will not succeed in doing that, as he couldn't succeed in the last two years, I am sure that he will then push Montenegro outside of the federation so that he can continue to be the unchallenged dictator in Serbia." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949140403,67452,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>TV show to unveil Nato's clash in Kosovo </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Guardian<br>Richard Norton-Taylor <br><br>William Cohen, the US defence secretary, has roundly dismissed British claims that Nato had been prepared to use ground troops to force Serb army and police units out of Kosovo. <br>Sharp differences between Britain and the US - strongly denied during the bombing campaign - about the possibility of sending in troops are exposed in interviews to be broadcast in a three-part series starting tomorrow with Mr Cohen and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. <br><br>"It was never a close call in getting a consensus to put land forces in," Mr Cohen says. "Out of the total 19 [Nato countries], I doubt very much whether we could have gotten the consensus. I'm convinced we could not have." <br><br>The ongoing dispute about proposals to use ground troops when Nato was desperately concerned with the continuing failure of air attacks to destroy military targets will be exposed in the Channel 4 series, War in Europe. <br><br>"To make preparations for [a ground campaign] would have meant 150,000 to 200,000 troops, most of which would have come from us and, given the fact that we had a lack of enthusiasm for even a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, then it became very clear to me that it was going to be a very hard sell, if not impossible to persuade the American people," Mr Cohen says. <br><br>A US senate majority was opposed to a land campaign and the only option was to "stay the course" with bombing from the air, he adds. <br><br>However, Mr Blair says the US president, Bill Clinton, was prepared to consider sending in ground troops. "It would be wrong to think that the US administration was sitting there saying we're not contemplating ground troops because that wasn't their position at all," he says. <br><br>Mr Blair adds: "My belief is that President Clinton was prepared to see the thing through - and if that meant there was no other way we could do this, other than the use of ground troops, then I believe he was prepared to contemplate that. I think the bottom line about not losing was indeed the bottom line for people." <br><br>Mr Cohen also confirms that US military chiefs were split about a land campaign. <br><br>During the war, British ministers let it be known they were deeply frustrated with the Clinton administration's refusal to consider the use of ground troops. A string of US and British media reports which reflected this prompted Washington to deny any suggestion of a rift between Nato's two closest allies. <br><br>After the war, Whitehall claimed that overtly public discussions about the possibility of using ground troops was designed to keep Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic guessing. <br><br>Mr Blair tells Channel 4 that Mr Milosevic "had to know that we were prepared to do whatever it took to win". <br><br>However, Mr Cohen takes a different view. <br><br>"If you don't have a consensus for a ground campaign, then you shouldn't try to hold out the illusion that you have one," he says. "Empty gestures don't persuade your adversary that you're serious." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949140358,43529,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Ally of ultranationalist Serb leader shot</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- A close aide of Serbia's ultranationalist vice premier was shot and severely injured today by unidentified assailants, independent B2-92 radio reported. <br><br>Petar Panic, a security aide and longtime associate of vice premier Vojislav Seselj, was taken to a Belgrade hospital for emergency surgery after being shot several times, according to the radio report and police sources. There was no immediate word on Panic's condition. <br><br>Panic is a member of Seselj's Serbian Radical Party, an ultranationalist group that has been close to the ruling government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for years. <br><br>Panic was reportedly shot in the Belgrade suburb of Surcin, about 10 miles from the capital, shortly after noon. Hospital sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Seselj and another top Radical Party official were rushed to the hospital and Panic was being treated. <br><br>The police and the Radical Party declined immediate comment. No other details were available. <br><br>Working as Seselj's bodyguard, Panic beat a human rights activist and prominent Belgrade lawyer, Zarko Korac, after Korac argued with Seselj in a television talk show in 1998. <br><br>Earlier this month, notorious Serb paramilitary leader and ultranationalist Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was shot dead in a Belgrade hotel together with two associates. That slaying -- the latest in a series of killings of prominent public figures -- has attracted enormous public attention and led to speculation about showdowns in Serbia's complex underworld of political, paramilitary and mob leaders. <br><br>During the wars of secession in the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia, both Arkan and Seselj organized paramilitary units that fought on the Serb side. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949140337,63335,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>KOSOVO: US irked by funds delay </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Financial Times<br><br>By Stephen Fidler in Washington<br><br>Slow delivery of funds pledged to Kosovo by the European Union is causing unease in Washington, where officials are worried that delays may threaten prospects for peace.<br><br>The level of US concern was expressed forcefully this week by Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state. In a speech to the European Institute in Washington on Wednesday, she said the same determination should be brought to the task of building the peace in Kosovo as was brought to the conflict. "Unfortunately, a serious crisis of funding has arisen in Kosovo. The reason is that, too often, the international community has promised money, but not delivered," she said.<br><br>"Here, as with the region as a whole, it is vital that our partners join us not only in pledging generously, but also in disbursing promptly," she said. The United Nations mission in Kosovo could not restore electric power, provide public security, arrange elections, and revitalise the economy on the basis of promises alone.<br><br>Mrs Albright did not mention the EU explicitly, except to praise the European Commission for pledging E12bn ($11.88bn) for the task of rebuilding south-eastern Europe over the next six years. But officials said the target of her remarks was the EU. The bureaucratic delays in delivering aid were potentially serious because the task of rebuilding the province was expected to accelerate in the spring.<br><br>The issue is also sensitive in the US which provided by far the largest military effort in the Kosovo conflict, and therefore the majority of the financing. The counterpart to this was expected to be Europe's much larger share in financing the post-war reconstruction.<br><br>Chris Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, has expressed his own frustration at the delays in delivering aid. Officials had expressed a determination not to repeat the mistakes in Bosnia where funds were very slow to arrive.<br><br>Nonetheless, aid for Kosovo and other parts of the region appeared again to have become bogged down, in part because Commission procedures for disbursing funds had been tightened following the resignation of the last Commission over financing scandals.<br><br>At a conference in November in Brussels, donors pledged more than $1bn of support for Kosovo until the end of 2000. Of that an estimated $527m was pledged by the EU and $157m by the US.<br><br>But Washington has been favourably surprised by development of the so-called stability pact for south-eastern Europe, launched last July, in which the EU plays a prominent role.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949059624,71465,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro reshuffles cabinet after resignation</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Montenegro's parliament approved Thursday a reshuffled cabinet following the resignation of the foreign minister over alleged links with the Italian Mafia. <br>Opposition deputies walked out after a lengthy debate and the ruling majority then voted in favor of Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic's new cabinet, which included Branko Lukovac, Montenegro's envoy to Slovenia, as foreign minister. <br><br>Former Foreign Minister Branko Perovic resigned last month over alleged involvement in smuggling and other criminal associations with the Mafia. <br><br>In other changes, Ljubisa Krgovic was named deputy prime minister, Rade Gregovic minister of urban planning and Radojica Luburic culture minister. <br><br>The four new ministers are all members of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the senior partner in the ruling coalition, as were their predecessors. The changes had been planned before Perovic's resignation. <br><br>The fifth, Budimir Dubak, a member of the National Party, will be in charge of religious affairs. <br><br>Dubak replaces Slobodan Tomovic who was criticized for being too close to the Serbian Orthodox Church, which does not recognize Montenegro's breakaway Orthodox church. <br><br>Montenegro's pro-Western government came under pressure both at home and abroad when allegations against Perovic were made public after an Italian judge ordered him and others to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949059596,80062,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>ELECTRICITY: Belgrade shows resilience over fuel supplies</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Financial Times<br><br>By Irena Guzelova<br><br>A cold spell this week in Serbia, which has seen temperatures drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius, has shown the country's energy supply is far more resilient than many had expected. Despite dire predictions from international aid organisations during the autumn, power cuts have been sporadic and limited to periods of unusually low temperatures.<br><br>Despite the EU and US embargo on oil shipments to Serbia, the authorities have gone to enormous lengths to secure enough economic support to stop the population from freezing, while three opposition-controlled towns have benefited from free fuel oil shipments provided by the European Union and Norway.<br><br>"Both the ruling parties and the opposition are placing a huge political priority on keeping the country warm," said Robert Dann, a UN humanitarian affairs officer in Belgrade. "Both want to reap the political dividends."<br><br>Despite the EU and US embargo, the government has ready access to supplies from Russia and neighbouring countries.<br><br>Russia agreed to deliver gas, diesel and fuel oil in the autumn last year. Officials in Belgrade say Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, is delivering roughly half of the country's cold weather needs.<br><br>In addition, the UN says Serbia is spending around $1m a day importing electricity, though this amount rises during spells of cold weather.<br><br>The bulk comes from Slovakia. The UN thinks that an entire hydro-electric plant in Republika Srpska at Visegrad, near the Serbian border, is dedicated to supplying Yugoslavia.<br><br>Statements from officials in Republika Srpska indicate that Serbia's electricity debt to the country stands at about DM20m (E10.2m, $10.2m).<br><br>The Yugoslav authorities have not explained how they are financing the supplies. Analysts, however, say the government pays for much of its electricity in cash, helped by the first installments of a recently arranged $300m loan from China, whose repayment terms are thought to be unusually generous.<br><br>The UN says exports of copper to Slovakia from a mine at Bor, near the Bulgarian border, also helped Belgrade to secure the foreign currency needed to cover its energy needs.<br><br>Yet Yugoslavia is still struggling to pay for the quantities of energy it needs. Reserves of heating oil are running low.<br><br>The state oil company has said natural gas supplies, the main source of heating in many towns, are too small to keep household temperatures at their customary level.<br><br>Doctors say hospitals aren't warm enough. In Aleksinac, to the south of the country, the local health care centre stopped admitting patients for hospital treatment because of a shortage of heating oil.<br><br>State-run television is urging citizens to save energy to avoid the collapse of the country's strained electricity grid, damaged or destroyed in Nato's bombing campaign last spring.<br><br>"In normal conditions we need about 3bn cubic metres of gas per year, yet we are receiving only about a third of this because we don't have enough money," said Djoko Buric, general manager of Naftna Industrija Srbije, the state-oil company.<br><br>"The electricity system is on the edge. If something happened to a major thermal generator there would be a major blackout."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949059567,22564,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugoslavs, Bosnian Serbs call for Milosevic exit</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BANJA LUKA, Bosnia, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Yugoslav opposition officials, the exiled crown prince, religious leaders and Bosnian Serb politicians agreed on Thursday on the need to unite to oust President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>In a joint statement after a meeting in the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka, they called for democratisation of Yugoslavia's dominant republic Serbia, greater opposition unity and closer links with Serbs living abroad. <br><br>"Democratisation of Serbia and a change of the regime which has not brought to Serbs anything but tragedy are of the highest importance," the statement said. <br><br>"All participants agreed that the unity of the Serbian opposition and closer links with Serbs living in neighbouring countries and diaspora are needed for the accomplishment of these goals and Serbia's brighter future," it said. <br><br>They strongly supported the unity of Serbia and Montenegro, it added. <br><br>Yugoslavia, run by Milosevic for the last decade, is comprised of Serbia and the coastal pro-Western republic of Montenegro. <br><br>Serbia's fragmented opposition has been hampered by personal rivalries. But the main opposition parties agreed earlier this month on a plan to launch joint anti-government demonstrations if Milosevic ignored a demand for early elections by April. <br><br>The meeting was attended by Crown Prince Alexandar Karadjordjevic, Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, Bishop Artemije of the Serbian Orthodox church in Kosovo and several Yugoslav opposition leaders. <br><br>These included Civic Alliance head Goran Svilanovic, the coordinator of the Alliance for Change umbrella group, Vladan Batic, Kosovo Serb leader Momcilo Trajkovic and Belgrade mayor Vojislav Mihajlovic. <br><br>Alexander is the son of King Petar II who left Yugoslavia in 1941 after Nazi Germany overran his country. He died in exile in 1970. The prince, who was on his first visit to Bosnia, has lived abroad all his life. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem949059543,62102,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Kosovo Albanians raise complaints on U.S. soldiers' behavior </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By MELISSA EDDY <br><br>VITINA, Yugoslavia - Lulzim Ukshini was hanging out with his buddies in Sam's Pizzeria when a grenade exploded in a Serb store across town. The first he heard about the attack was when four U.S. peacekeepers came looking for him. <br><br>"They started to beat me nonstop, telling me to admit that I did it," he said. "Then they pulled a knife out and threatened to cut me into pieces." <br><br>Ukshini's story of mistreatment at the hands of American soldiers is being echoed by other ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who tell of beatings, inappropriate body searches of women and daily harassment by U.S. troops. <br><br>The allegations come at a time of heightened concern following the rape and murder of an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl. U.S. Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, a weapons-squad leader from Fort Bragg, N.C., was charged this month with murder and indecent acts with a child in connection with her death. <br><br>Ethnic Albanians say the killing is not their only complaint against the Americans. Their allegations have prompted an official Army investigation and threaten a breakdown in trust between the U.S. peacekeepers and the citizens they were sent to protect. <br><br>U.S. officials declined to discuss specific allegations because many of the complaints are under investigation. But the Army acknowledges it has a big problem with community relations in Kosovo. <br><br>"These are serious allegations that we do take seriously," said Maj. Erik Gunhus, a public affairs officer at Camp Bondsteel. "We will investigate and if we find they are true, we will act accordingly. We want to show that no one is above the law." <br><br>In a statement issued Sunday, the Army said preliminary findings indicate several U.S. soldiers may have been involved in misconduct, "including improper use of physical force and threats against Kosovar males and inappropriate physical contact with Kosovar females." Gunhus confirmed several soldiers have been transferred out of Vitina in connection with the investigation. <br><br>Still, Ukshini and other Vitina residents are skeptical. <br><br>"I wouldn't complain to KFOR because it does no good," Ukshini said, using the acronym for the NATO-led peacekeeping force that entered Kosovo in June after a 78-day bombing campaign forced a halt to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians. <br><br>"Every time we went to complain, they told us: 'It's not true. Our soldiers don't behave like that,'" said Ramiz Hasani, 21, whose father, Xhauit, has been detained by the Americans in the killing of a Macedonian policeman. <br><br>Hasani said American soldiers have entered his father's restaurant several times in the past two months and harassed customers for no apparent reason. <br><br>Asked about the allegations, Defense Secretary William Cohen said he cannot comment on specific cases. But he said U.S. and NATO forces are doing police work in Kosovo only because there are not yet enough civilian police available. He emphasized the need for more police. <br><br>"We have long stated the position that the United States and our NATO forces can carry out a military operation quite successfully, but they are not for the most part - there are some exceptions - trained to carry out police work," Cohen said. "They are not trained for that, they are not competent really to carry out police work, nor should they be doing it." <br><br>Daut Xhemajli, president of the Vitina Municipal Board, says relations between the Americans and ethnic Albanians in this farming town 45 miles southeast of Pristina have become strained. He blames the Americans. <br><br>"One night they randomly entered a bar and started shouting at the customers, 'What are you going to burn next?' and 'Who are you going to kill now?'" he said. "They were treating all of the customers as criminals." <br><br>Contributing to the problem, Xhemajli said, is the fact that civilians have no avenue for lodging official complaints about the soldiers. "There is no facility or a civilian institution where citizens could file a complaint against KFOR," he said. <br><br>As a result, many ethnic Albanians say they try to avoid contact with the Americans. This is particularly true of women, who have complained of body searches by male soldiers. <br><br>Zijavere Azizi, 24, said she was walking in the center of town with a friend several weeks ago when four soldiers stopped the pair and started searching them without explanation. <br><br>"One of the men grabbed my arm and another grabbed my friend and pushed him against the concrete wall," she said. "They took everything out of my pockets and put their hands in my pockets, all of my pockets. ... Normally, I don't allow somebody to touch me all over my body, but I couldn't do anything." <br><br>Since then, Azizi said, she has left her home only when absolutely necessary. <br><br>Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who heads the U.S. troops in Kosovo, has met with Vitina leaders to express American concern over the allegations. <br><br>Xhemajli acknowledges: "We are seeing more serious efforts ... to cooperate with the citizens. We've been asking for this for a long time." <br><br>For Ukshini and other Vitina residents, it's a matter of restoring lost trust. <br><br>"When they entered (Kosovo), I respected them because I respect that uniform," said Ukshini, a wiry 28-year-old. "But they behaved in the most inappropriate way."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948963003,62276,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serb fails to have atrocities sentence overturned </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br><br>By Stephen Castle in Brussels <br><br>Dusko Tadic, the first man to go on trial for war crimes committed since the Second World War, had his sentence reduced to 20 years yesterday as he exhausted the appeals procedure of the international tribunal in The Hague. <br><br>The tribunal ruled that Tadic's 25-year sentence had been "excessive" because the Bosnian Serb was at a low level of command when he took part in the murder and torture of Bosnian Muslims at the Omarska detention camp in 1992.Judge Mohammed Shahabuddeen said that, while Tadic was guilty of "incontestably heinous" crimes, he was not one of the most senior architects of ethnic cleansing among the Bosnian Serb leadership. <br><br>A former leader of the Serb Democratic Party, a police reservist and karate instructor, Tadic was indicted for his part in a two-day attack on Kozarac in which 800 civilians were killed by Bosnian Serbs. But it was his role in the torture and killing at "White House" in the Omarska detention camp that confirmed his notoriety. <br><br>Although yesterday's judgment should end Tadic's long trial, his defence could gain one final chance to review the case on a technicality, depending on whether Tadic's former counsel, Milan Vujin, is found guilty of contempt of court on Monday by the appeals chamber. <br><br>Tadic was arrested in February 1994 when he was recognised in Germany by former refugees. He was charged in April the following year and found guilty of war crimes in 1996. In July 1997 he was given a 20-year sentence, which was increased two years later on appeal to 25 years. <br><br>His defence argued that the the court was making Tadic a scapegoat for the crimes of his superiors, some of whom are still at large, and said that he was a mere "tadpole in a pool of sharks". <br><br>Yesterday the court recommended Tadic serve at least 10 years of the sentence from the time of his conviction in 1997.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948962985,62447,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Vice-President Takes Over Presidency Of Bosnia's Serb Republic</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">FOX News<br><br>BANJA LUKA, Bosnia — Bosnian Serb Vice President Mirko Sarovic told parliament on Wednesday he was taking over the powers of the president in a bid to resolve a drawn-out political crisis. <br><br> The move will enable Sarovic, of the hard-line Serb Democratic Party (SDS) founded in 1990 by wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to propose a new prime minister-designate. <br><br>The Serb republic, one of Bosnia's two autonomous entities, has been without a president for 10 months. <br><br>Last March, the Western body overseeing the peace process removed President Nikola Poplasen of the ultra-nationalist Radical party, accusing him of obstructing efforts to rebuild the country following the 1992-1995 war. <br><br>"I will make a contribution to the resolution of the political crisis in Republika Srpska," Sarovic told the Bosnian Serb assembly. "My duty is to take over these authorities while the situation is as it is." <br><br>Poplasen's failure to nominate a prime minister-designate with sufficient parliamentary backing allowed the government of Western-leaning Prime Minister Milorad Dodik to stay on in a caretaker capacity following elections in September 1998. <br><br>Dodik came to power early that year after ousting hard-liners still loyal to Karadzic, who is now a war crimes suspect believed to be hiding in eastern Bosnia. <br><br>But Sarovic said Dodik's government was not supported by parliament. "This is its key weakness," he told the assembly. <br><br>Sarovic did not say who he intended to put forward as new prime minister. The next session of parliament is scheduled for February 8. <br><br>The two main parliamentary blocks — the Western-sponsored Sloga (Unity) coalition and the two hardline parties — have around 30 seats each in the 83-seat Bosnian parliament. <br><br>Deputies elected mainly by Muslim refugees now living in Bosnia's other autonomous entity — the Muslim-Croat federation — control 15 seats, giving them a crucial role. <br><br>The Muslim-led Coalition for a Single and Democratic Bosnia (KCD) joined the SDS and the Radical party in calling for the formation of a new government during a parliamentary debate which started on Tuesday. <br><br>The KCD move appeared to reflect frustration that Dodik has not given it seats in his government. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948962952,42827,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugo court says German mark in Montenegro illegal</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The Yugoslav constitutional court said on Wednesday that Montenegro's decision to use the German mark as parallel legal tender was illegal and called on Podgorica to drop it. <br>Acting on the request of the Yugoslav central bank and a minor leftist political party, the Patriotic Alliance, the court gave a 15-day deadline to the pro-Western government in the smaller Yugoslav republic to respond to its ruling. <br><br>It did not say what other steps it would take if there was no response. <br><br>In a first reaction to news from Belgrade, a senior Montenegrin government official told Reuters the government in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica would ignore the decision. <br><br>"Our stance is widely known. We recognise neither the federal Yugoslav institutions nor their decisions," he said. <br><br>Two months ago, the same court said it was suspending the Montenegrin government's monetary moves, insisting they violated the constitution of the federal state comprising Serbia and Montenegro. Podgorica took no notice. <br><br>"Montenegro has endangered the functioning of the monetary and foreign exchange systems of Yugoslavia, payment operations and the implementation of monetary policy," state news agency Tanjug quoted judge Milomir Jakovljevic as saying on Wednesday. <br><br>Podgorica introduced the German mark as a parallel currency alongside the weakening Yugoslav dinar on November 2 to protect its tiny economy from inflation spilling over from Serbia. <br><br>It set up a monetary council and banned the Yugoslav central bank from controlling its finances. <br><br>The government of Montenegro has said the dual currency scheme was only legalising the status quo, as the German mark has been widely used illegally in both republics for years. <br><br>Ties between the two republics have deteriorated since 1997, when Montenegro elected pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic who said the country should work towards rejoining the world. <br><br>This was in sharp contrast to the policies of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which pushed the country into even deeper isolation. Yugoslavia has been under various sanctions for almost 10 years. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948877043,74514,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>MONTENEGRO: Djukanovic calls for deal on autonomy </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Stefan Wagstyl, East Europe editor<br><br>Milo Djukanovic, the president of Montenegro, on Tuesday said it was too early to hold a referendum on taking his mountain republic out of Yugoslavia.<br><br>Mr Djukanovic, who is under domestic pressure to carry out a threat to call an independence referendum, said he hoped Belgrade would agree to proposals for greater autonomy for Montenegro that would make a referendum unnecessary.<br><br>Speaking during a visit to London, Mr Djukanovic said: "Montenegro still patiently hopes Belgrade will embrace such an offer . . . But such patience cannot be without limits."<br><br>Meanwhile, he said Montenegro was pressing ahead with efforts to promote democracy, economic reform and integration with the EU and transatlantic structures.<br><br>The republic, which recently introduced the German D-Mark as its official currency, replacing the Yugoslav dinar, was planning widespread privatisation in April, said Mr Djukanovic. This would involve voucher privatisation (where vouchers representing shares are distributed to citizens) as well as inviting strategic investors into larger enterprises.<br><br>Tony Blair, UK prime minister, and Robin Cook, UK foreign secretary, repeated promises to support Montenegro in its struggle to resist pressure from Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's president.<br><br>However, Nato officials have made clear that such support does not imply military intervention in the case of an attack from Belgrade.<br><br>The Montenegrin president urged the UK to persuade the EU to expand the range of economic assistance available to his republic. He criticised the slowness with which he claimed aid promised under the international stability pact for south east Europe was arriving.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948877028,87618,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro says too soon for breakaway vote</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">LONDON (Reuters) - Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said Tuesday it was too early to hold a referendum on breaking his tiny Balkan republic away from Yugoslavia. <br>Djukanovic, who faces growing domestic pressure to make good a threat to call a referendum on independence, said he wanted to give Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic time to consider Montenegro's conditions for staying in the federation with Serbia. <br><br>Speaking in London after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Djukanovic said he was charting Montenegro's policy in a "responsible and careful" manner. <br><br>"In making such plans we do not think that this is the time for organizing a referendum," he said. <br><br>"What we think is we should give Belgrade more time to say what they have to say on the conditions that we have proposed for the preservation of our joint state," Djukanovic told reporters through an interpreter. <br><br>But he said his pro-Western government would resist efforts by Belgrade to undermine his political and market reforms. Yugoslav troops briefly took over Podgorica airport last month in what was interpreted as a show of strength by Milosevic. <br><br>"It is clear that our tolerance and our patience are not limitless and that Montenegro will not sacrifice its future ... for the sake of remaining under a dictatorship from Belgrade," Djukanovic said. <br><br>Montenegro has been at odds with Serbia since Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and began implementing market reforms. Montenegro has just over 600,000 people, compared to Serbia's 10 million. <br><br>But Djukanovic has not named a date for a referendum on breaking away from Montenegro's powerful neighbor, on the advice of Western leaders who fear another Balkan conflict. <br><br>Last week, Western officials drove that message home, saying Montenegro could not expect the United States or NATO to come to its rescue if it tried to break away from Yugoslavia. <br><br>British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who also held talks with Djukanovic, said Montenegro's fate lay in its own hands. <br><br>"Whether or not Montenegro goes down the path of independence is a matter for Montenegro and for its neighbors," he said.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948877002,63271,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>YUGOSLAVIA: Danube to be cleared </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br><br>Yugoslavia has agreed to allow the European Union access to clear the wreckages of three bridges on the river Danube destroyed by Nato's bombs. The debris has blocked navigation and cost neighbouring countries millions of dollars in lost trade.<br><br>Representatives of the 11 nations with access to the Danube agreed on Tuesday to an Austro-Hungarian plan to clear the bridges at a cost of E24.1m ($24.3m).<br><br>Previous attempts to clear the Danube have been stalled by Belgrade's insistence that the wreckage could not be removed until the West agreed to pay to rebuild all three bridges.<br><br>Yet building a bridge would violate EU sanctions, which forbid investment in the country.<br><br>The 11-member Danube Commission will present the proposal to the EU, whose foreign ministers will vote on it when they meet next month. It does not include plans for the EU to fund the construction of a bridge.<br><br>Under the proposal, the EU would launch a tender to clear the Danube, said Predrag Filipov, the president of the executive board of Novi Sad's city council.<br><br>The tender would exclude Yugoslav companies and give preference to those from countries neighbouring the Danube.<br><br>Representative of Novi Sad's opposition-controlled city council are travelling to Brussels to try to gather support for the construction of a new bridge.<br><br>Since Nato destroyed its bridges in spring last year, the city's 286,000 population has relied on a pontoon bridge that would also have to be dismantled to make the river navigable.<br><br>"We are arguing that the city needs a bridge for humanitarian reasons," said Mr Filipov. "Without a bridge many citizens don't have access to hospitals or schools and supplies of food."<br><br>The city of Vienna has offered to donate a temporary bridge, which has a life-span of about five years and would leave the river navigable. Though the EU would have to make a special exemption in its sanctions policy to permit the donation, it would not involve financial transfers to Yugoslavia, which are explicitly forbidden.<br><br>The blockage has not affected Yugoslavia's economy, since sanctions have already significantly reduced its trade. Russian and Ukrainian ships carrying fuel to Yugoslavia can also bypass the Danube via an extensive network of canals and waterways feeding off the river.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948702662,854,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Did Milosevic's son kill Arkan? </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Observer<br>The list of those implicated over Arkan's murder now includes the son of the Yugoslav President, who is a big player in the fuel black market<br>Kosovo: special report <br><br>Peter Beaumont and Nerma Jelacic <br>Sunday January 23, 2000 <br><br>The four men in tracksuits and trainers crossed the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel to where Arkan was sitting, chatting with his bodyguards. They asked innocuously if the hotel's fitness club was open. Arkan replied that it had closed, shaking hands with the men, apparently ending a banal encounter for the leader of the 'Tigers': indicted war criminal, Serbian hero and gangster. <br><br>As two of the men turned - apparently to walk away - their companions produced guns, spraying the most notorious killer of the Balkan wars with bullets. <br><br>According to eyewitnesses, one of the assailants aimed a Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun at Arkan's face and sprayed him with bullets. One 9mm bullet entered his left eye, penetrating the brain. Another entered one of his lungs. <br><br>Arkan's wife - Svetlana Raznatovic, better know as the Serb folk singer Ceca - was shopping 50 metres away in La Frans boutique when she heard the gunfire. While the shopkeeper tried to restrain her, for fear that she might also get injured in the shooting, Ceca ran into the lobby, where she found her husband dying in a pool of blood, and tried to drag him towards the door. <br><br>A hotel guest helped Ceca bundle Arkan into a car and drive him to hospital as Ceca tried to clear his mouth of blood. She was too late. Arkan - Europe's most infamous mass murderer since World War II - was already dead. <br><br>Last week, as details of Arkan's last moments seeped out from beneath the wall of secrecy that descended following his death, one question remained: who killed Arkan? Was he a victim of Slobodan Milosevic's son, Marko, in a turf war over the black market in petrol and diesel? <br><br>Ceca had told friends that she had had a premonition of her husband's death. The night before she had dreamed that her teeth were falling out - a common enough dream, but in the pantheon of Serb folklore, this is a warning of impending death. But if Arkan was nervous about his safety in the week before his murder, he showed little sign of it, going about his business as usual. <br><br>This involved keeping up his high profile as half of Serbia's most high-octane couple, being seen in clubs, holding court at the hotel that was his base, supervising his football club, Obilic. But business as usual - as most residents in Belgrade were well aware - meant something discreetly hidden from the public gaze: running a criminal empire, largely involved in the black market for cigarettes and petrol. <br><br>A former bank robber still wanted on an Interpol warrant, Arkan's criminal activities have supplied one possible motive for the crime. <br><br>In Belgrade, however, as the local media have speculated, you do not make a move against a figure as popular and powerful as Arkan without some kind of political backing. <br><br>While Arkan appeared relaxed, friends say in private he was getting jumpy. Too many prominent figures from his violent milieu of crime, nationalist politics and paramilitaries had recently been murdered. <br><br>Arkan was said by friends to have been worried about his safety in the last few months, reasoning that he was one of the last survivors of the criminal and paramilitary leaders closely involved with both state security and the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>Another indicted war crime suspect who was said to have led paramilitary forces in Bosnia, Slobodan Miljkovic, died in a hail of bullets in 1998 in the Serbian town of Kragujevac. The last such figure still alive is Ljubisa Buha, known as Cume, who is based in Belgrade. <br><br>Arkan had other reasons to be nervous. Despite his infamy in the international community and an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, his most dangerous enemies were close by, underworld and political rivals who would have liked him out of the way. <br><br>Last month Zoran Sijan, a mafia leader and Arkan's kick-boxing partner, was shot while waiting for a traffic light. In recent years a number of Arkan's other associates and friends have also been murdered. <br><br>Some of these killings were carried out in the most blatant fashion, such as the shooting of Radovan Stojicic Badza, then the Minister of the Interior and Public Safety. Like Arkan, Badza had fought in Croatia. He was shot in a restaurant on 11 April, 1997. <br><br>In September, Vukasin Gojak Vule, a close friend and security manager at Arkan's casino, was killed in front of a nightclub. Another friend, Belgrade crime boss Rade Caldovic Centa, and his wife, Maja Pavic, were murdered in Belgrade's main square. <br><br>But if Arkan was coming under pressure from other criminal elements in Serbia, he was also not making any friends with Yugoslavia's President and fellow indicted war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, and his powerful wife Mira Markovic. <br><br>According to opposition journalists in Belgrade, Arkan was growing disaffected with Milosevic's regime, allying himself with former police officials opposed to Mira Markovic's party. He was also, they claim, making overtures to the political opposition in recent months. Perhaps more dangerous still, Arkan had voiced support for the Presi dent of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, who broke with Milosevic and has moved closer to the West. <br><br>But it is where Belgrade's politics and crime intersect that many believe the real answer to Arkan's murder will be uncovered - in the figure of Marko Milosevic - son of Slobodan, and one of the biggest players in black market for fuel. <br><br>It is a theory that has been floated in a long article in the respected independent newspaper Vreme, which has suggested that Arkan was mur dered after trying to monopolise the fuel market, creating a conflict of interest between 'the deceased one and Marko Milosevic regarding some monopoly on the import of liquid fuels'. <br><br>'The problem is that it is being claimed that Arkan stepped on the toes of some very serious people because the sale of smuggled fuel is an extremely lucrative business,' Vreme reports. 'Names are being mentioned that are not fit to print, as well as political parties that have been consolidating business lately.' <br><br>At the heart of this version of the motive for his murder is Nato's destruction of Serbia's own oil refineries, leaving it dependent on imported fuel and creating a widespread black market. Anyone with some friends in high places, or enough cash to bribe officials, can buy a piece of the action. <br><br>Arkan, however, was reported to be getting greedy. His men were stopping trucks as they entered Serbia and paying the smugglers wholesale prices and then reselling at black market prices, effectively creating a monopoly that was cutting out other major black marketeers - including Marko. <br><br>Few in Belgrade are confident that the authorities will ever truthfully get to the bottom of Arkan's murder. For while Belgrade police have made arrests and say the case is close to completion, many observers believe that little real effort is being made to find who was behind the killings. <br><br>But one thing is intriguing. Of the three men arrested, two of them were said to be former policemen sacked or suspended for links to the underworld. Yesterday Police Colonel Milenko Ercic identified the suspects as Dobrosav Gavric, 23, allegedly the triggerman; former policeman Dejan Pitulic, 33; and Vujadin Krstic, 36. <br><br>In one of his last interviews, given to the newspaper Nezavisne Novine in the Bosnian Serb Republic, Arkan said: 'My whole life has been one mega thriller movie.' It may be a thriller that lacks a denouement.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948702638,86855,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbia freezes, war-hit power grid strains</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Blizzards swept across Serbia on Sunday, straining the country's bomb-damaged electricity grid and plunging some Belgrade suburbs into cold and darkness. <br>Heavy snowfall snarled roads, including the main highway linking Serbia with Hungary and Macedonia, and forced airports in Tivat and Podgorica, Montenegro, to close, authorities said. <br><br>The official Tanjug news agency reported navigation on the Danube river had been halted by high winds and snow. <br><br>Power company Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) appealed to the public to conserve electricity to prevent the grid from collapsing and urged people to shift to other sources of heat. <br><br>Nearly a third of Serbia's grid was damaged in three-months of NATO bombing last year, designed to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. <br><br>In Belgrade, the temperature sank to minus five degrees Celsius in the early afternoon and weather experts forecast it would drop to minus 22 degrees between Tuesday and Friday. <br><br>"This is a moderate forecast. If the skies clear, it could get even colder," a Weather Service official told Reuters. <br><br>Residents in some Belgrade suburbs said their homes were enveloped by cold and darkness. In other areas, where gas is the prime source of community heating, lightbulbs blinked. <br><br>EPS said daily electricity consumption had jumped to 131.2 million kiloWatt-hours. Media reported this week that the utility was producing 117 million kWh a day and relying on neighbouring grids for the rest. <br><br>Yugoslavia, subject to an oil embargo which bans imports of crude and oil products, has had regular heating problems since November when the first snow fell. <br><br>Belgrade had hoped that Russia would provide enough natural gas to heat it through the winter, but Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has delivered barely half of Serbia's needs. <br><br>City authorities have urged local gas distributor Energogas to keep the heating on 24 hours a day. The central, community heating is normally delivered between 0600 and 2100 hours. <br><br>The European Union has sent heating oil to the Serbian opposition-held towns of Pirot and Nis. On Monday, the 15-nation bloc was expected to add other towns to the list of those receiving fuel under its Energy for Democracy scheme.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948702620,53121,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Family fights for control of Arkan empire</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Tom Walker and Alex Todorovic <br>The Sunday Times<br> <br>AS THE dark earth of Belgrade's new cemetery settles on the coffin of Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic,the Serbian warlord and gangster supreme, the break-up of his empire threatens to pit his family against an array of rival mobsters and the country's corrupt political elite. <br>Arkan's third wife, Ceca, has already shown that she will not be intimidated. Metamorphosed from scantily clad pop star to grieving but defiantly beautiful widow, she cut an imperious figure at the funeral and appears to command the loyalty of Arkan's "Tiger" paramilitaries, a 1,000-strong private army financed by Raznatovic businesses. <br><br>Ceca has already spat her disgust at the Serbian authorities, protesting that police delayed Arkan's final journey to hospital from the Hotel Intercontinental where he was shot. Her claim lends weight to the widely held theory that state powers conspired to kill Arkan. <br><br>Ceca's immediate problem is bringing together Arkan's fragmented family. His eldest son, Mihailo, born in Sweden, is, at 24, just two years younger than Ceca, and has only dabbled on the fringes of Arkan's portfolio. He has run one of his father's mobile phone businesses and was involved in plans to set up a new mobile network for the former Yugoslavia. <br><br>But he has shown none of the ruthless cunning that took Arkan to the top of the underworld. If anything, Arkan preferred to keep his family out of his dirty work. Ceca must now drag them into that world if the empire is to survive. <br><br>Entertainment industry sources close to Ceca say she has a good relationship with Mihailo, who returned from Sweden to earn his family spurs with the Tigers in Bosnia. He has even featured in one of her raunchy "turbofolk" videos. Their biggest task will be to hang on to the jewel in Arkan's crown, Obilic football club. <br><br>Ceca is president, and is thought to be the only person to know the whereabouts of the club's European accounts. Because there were police warrants for Arkan's arrest in most of Europe, she travelled alone with the club in European competitions and had a close knowledge of how television revenues were distributed. <br><br>In her husband's extensive black-market legacy, however, Ceca finds herself up against the intersecting evils of gangsters and politicians from the ruling elite. Arkan's semi-legal businesses included the SDG holding company, used as a conduit for funds to the Tigers, and two more companies, Ari and Byzantine, involved in import-export, tourism and casinos. His most above-board assets included two property development companies, bakeries and boutiques. He was also building Belgrade's biggest business centre. These visible parts of his empire alone were estimated to be worth more than £5m. <br><br>From the mobster shakeup under way in Belgrade may come clues as to who killed Arkan, and whether they were sponsored by the state or motivated by revenge and greed. <br><br>Belgrade security sources have cast their minds back two months to the death of Zoran Sijan, a car racketeer from the suburb of Zemun. His assassination was linked to Arkan and, four days before the Intercontinental bloodbath, Arkan and Ceca received strange messages while appearing on a television talk show. An anonymous viewer called to say that Ceca resembled Sijan's widow and another told Arkan to wear a jacket - a gangster double-entendre for a bullet-proof vest. <br><br>Although Arkan cut an almost medieval figure, transcending the normal boundaries of gangsterdom, his wealth never matched that of the inner circle of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, and his attempts to redress that imbalance may have cost him dearly. <br><br>The Belgrade newspaper Vreme claimed he clashed with Mirko Marjanovic, the Serbian prime minister who controls all gas imports, and his interest in oil trading put him on a collision course with the parliamentary speaker, Dragan Tomic, who controls state refineries. <br><br>Arkan faced another ambitious predator in Marko Milosevic, the president's son. Once a loose cannon who did little else than run a discoteque and indulge in thuggery, Marko has for two years focused on building his personal fortune. <br><br>As police in Belgrade said they had arrested three men in connection with the killing, the most far-fetched theory is that Arkan staged the whole stunt using a double, and is in fact still alive. Only slightly less fantastic is the claim by Arkan's lawyer, Giovanni di Stefano, that a unit of Britain's Special Boat Service killed his client. <br><br>Interviewed in the G12 maximum security wing of Rome's Rebibbia prison, di Stefano, who faces extradition to Britain over fraud charges, said he had telephone intercepts from his sources in GCHQ and Russian intelligence that revealed how the SBS operation was planned.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948702599,25228,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugoslavia Neighbors Meet To Discuss Hopes, Fears</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">SOFIA, Jan 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) Leaders of seven countries bordering Yugoslavia meet on Friday with senior European Union and NATO officials to discuss economic and security concerns in the continent's unstable Balkan region.<br><br>The informal summit in the Bulgarian spa resort of Hisarya is aimed at highlighting the international isolation of the hard-line regime in Belgrade and efforts to find regional identity in an area torn by ethnic and political strife for centuries.<br><br>"The goal of the meeting is to send an authentic regional message to the international community, to Yugoslavia and to Kosovo Albanians," Mihail Mihailov, chief of the Bulgarian government press service, said on Thursday.<br><br>"We should show that we are capable of generating stability. We are not only a problem but also a solution," he said.<br><br>The meeting brings together the premiers of Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia with the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Sergio Balanzino.<br><br>All the participating countries have problems of their own, but they also share a number of concerns topped by Yugoslavia and its veteran leader Slobodan Milosevic, blamed for starting three wars in the region in the past decade.<br><br>These sent hundreds of thousands of refugees to neighboring states, and many of them have yet to return.<br><br>COUNTRIES SEEKING ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AID FROM WEST<br><br>All participating states have suffered economic losses due to last year's war over Serbia's southern Kosovo province, and are seeking economic and political aid from the West as they try to integrate into Europe's mainstream.<br><br>The leaders are likely to seek answers from NATO and the EU on whether a Balkan Stability Pact launched by the major powers in a blaze of publicity last year is to become more than just good intentions. So far little has been done to fill it with economic substance.<br><br>Another issue, particularly important for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, is restoring navigation on the Danube, disrupted by the wreckage of bridges destroyed during last year's NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.<br><br>So far, the West has ruled out aid in clearing the Danube as long as Milosevic remains in power.<br><br>For the countries south of Yugoslavia, especially Albania and Macedonia, with its large ethnic Albanian minority, another concern is Kosovo, where the international community has struggled to restore calm and install democracy.<br><br>Solana, who headed NATO during the air war against Yugoslavia, is due to visit Kosovo on Friday and is likely to brief the meeting on his findings.<br><br>The participants are also likely to discuss the possible danger of a standoff between Milosevic and pro-Western Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic in what remains of Yugoslavia.<br><br>Wolfgang Petritsch, the West's peace envoy in Bosnia, said this week that civil war in Montenegro was possible if the tiny republic tried to break away from Belgrade.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948540868,67403,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>EU ready to clear Danube if Serbia plays ball</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BRUSSELS, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Work on clearing bombed bridges from the Danube River in Yugoslavia could begin in March if Belgrade agrees next week to a proposal that the European Union would help fund, EU sources said on Friday. <br>Removing the wreckage of three bridges destroyed by NATO during last year's 11-week air war over Kosovo from the river at Novi Sad in Serbia is essential to reopen the key international waterway to commercial shipping. <br><br>But it would require a compromise on the sensitive issue of post-war reconstruction that could cause friction with the United States. <br><br>The 30 million euro (eur-dollar) project awaits approval next Tuesday by the Budapest-based, 11-member Danube Commission, made up of states through which the river flows, including Yugoslavia. The decision requires unanimity. <br><br>Crucially, the plan involves erecting one temporary bridge over the river, EU sources told Reuters. The European Commission would pay 80 percent of the cost if it goes ahead. Allowing time for tenders, work could begin "probably in March." <br><br>Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has so far insisted the Danube will not be cleared until NATO allies agree to foot the bill for rebuilding bridges they destroyed. At least eight Danube bridges were among the 59 hit by NATO bombs and missiles. <br><br>The NATO allies, and the EU, have vowed that Serbia will get no reconstruction aid at all as long as Milosevic is in power. <br><br>A senior NATO diplomat said the United States was concerned that the West should not reward "Milosevic's blackmail tactics." Any EU money spent on Danube bridges would free cash for the Yugoslav leader to spend elsewhere, he said. <br><br>However, European allies including France and Germany are concerned at the regional economic damage being inflicted by the river's continued closure. <br><br>"No new investment and no reconstruction aid is still the official EU position," said an EU official who did not wish to be named. "So, this is all rather tricky." <br><br>The proposal calls for the clear-up to start with removal of unexploded munitions, which could require NATO military experts. But NATO sources said they were unaware of any unexploded bombs at the Novi Sad site. <br><br>MINIMALIST SOLUTION <br><br>Lower Danube states, led by Serbia's northern neighbour Hungary, have been pressing for months for a pragmatic solution to the impasse, so that full commercial navigation on the 2,850 km (1,700 mile) waterway can be restored. <br><br>Regional trade -- decimated by years of war in ex-Yugoslavia and the international wall of sanctions it generated -- has been severely hindered by the Danube blockage. Some shipping companies say they have lost millions. <br><br>Hungary warned late last year of a threat of major flooding upstream from Novi Sad if winter ice piled up around the bridge wreckage and strangled the river flow. But that risk, which may have been exaggerated to gain sympathy, appears to have receded. <br><br>Serbia threw a pontoon bridge across the Danube at Novi Sad after the NATO bombing ended. To let shipping pass, this will have to be removed and replaced by an alternative crossing. <br><br>The sources said the temporary solution for Novi Sad could be an old metal bridge currently stored in broken up parts in Austria -- technically not a "new investment." <br><br>Such a compromise on the "no reconstruction aid" policy may be more acceptable because Novi Said is run by political opponents of Milosevic, as are the cities of Nis and Pirot which have already received EU aid in the form of winter heating oil. <br><br>That "energy for democracy" scheme has won the acquiescence of Milosevic after a stop-go start and the EU is now considering extending fuel shipments to a score of opposition-run towns. <br><br>The West is looking to build cooperation with the Serbian people, if not the state, as the political opposition, whose leaders met Western representatives in Montenegro this week, overcomes divisions and builds a united anti-Milosevic platform. <br><br>EU foreign ministers are due to discuss a carrot-and-stick strategy on Monday, reviewing the ban on flights to Yugoslavia and other sanctions as well as the latest news on the Danube. <br><br>A position paper for that meeting reiterated that the main responsibility lies with Belgrade but said the EU would be ready "to examine a possible contribution once a proposal of the Danube Commission has been approved." <br><br>A NATO diplomat said Washington and its closest allies would be wary of giving anything away to Belgrade at this stage, but "the Americans realise the terrible impact of the Danube problem and know that we can't just leave it alone." <br><br>"I expect we are now moving towards some minimalist solution and as long as it does not presage any wider programme of assistance, the Americans will go along," he said. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948540829,66384,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Italian firms to challenge Serbia sanctions</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Jan 21 (Reuters) - A new, Italian-led consortium said on Friday it planned to open a trading centre near Belgrade and resume business links with Serbia, in a challenge to international sanctions. <br>"I sincerely hope that with this consortium we will manage to do something, to break the wall of sanctions and bring Serbia back to where it belongs," said Giuseppe Perniola, president of the Italian MA.GI.GA.s.r.l. export-import society for economic, technical and financial cooperation. <br><br>"This initiative is just the tip of an iceberg that has started to melt," Perniola told a news conference in Belgrade. <br><br>Perniola spoke on behalf of Italian industrialists from food and metal processing, telecommunications, car and furniture industries, who arrived in Belgrade on Thursday for a three-day visit to discuss forms of cooperation with Serbian firms. <br><br>The firms, mainly Italian but also some French, have set up a consortium called Consorzio Europeo Italia. Perniola said it would soon be joined by other western European companies. <br><br>"We expect this consortium to embrace the whole of Serbia. Serbs like us and we hope we'll be able to respond to that affection," said Perniola. "We hope that business will beat politics." <br><br>ITALIAN FIRMS VISIT SERBIA <br><br>The visiting companies included an industrial glue producing arm of Elf Aquitane, Cacciamali Spa, A.T.B., Samco, Inside International, Paladini Sa., Bigelli marmi Srl, Santo Galeazzi Pegassus, Bulbarelli, Il Ponte Srl, Ato Findley and Finelca Spa, the consortium said. <br><br>The French visited the Grmec chemicals giant to discuss production of industrial glues for wood-processing industries. <br><br>Cacciamali toured two local bus producing facilities while A.T.B. visited Pancevo oil refinery, heavily destroyed in NATO's three-month bombing last year. Talks between the companies will resume soon in Italy. <br><br>Samco had a meeting scheduled with Zastava car group on chances to produce spare parts for export markets outside Italy and Serbia. Santo Galeazzi Pegasus agreed with Takovo food processing plant to produce, process and can food for export markets. <br><br>Inside International eyed opportunies to expand its presence in Serbia. It already has cooperation with Simpo, a local firm. <br><br>"Inside has recently completed interior design of two Walt Disney ships. They are now looking for local Serbian furniture producers," Perniola said. <br><br>Il Ponte has discussed construction works with Braca Karic firm and said it would open an arts school for local talents. <br><br>Finelca will meet officials of the Ministry of Telecommunications and Mihajlo Pupin telecoms equipment maker. <br><br>SERBIA UNDER SANCTIONS <br><br>Serbia has been subject to various sanctions since 1992, first for its role in the 1992-1995 war in neighbouring Bosnia and later over Belgrade's repression in Kosovo. <br><br>The sanctions keep Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro, away from world financial bodies and foreign capital markets, ban investments, flights and crude oil deliveries. <br><br>Perniola said the new commercial centre, to be opened next month 35 kms (20 miles) north-west of Belgrade, would be a wholetrade centre designed to attract local and east European businesses, particularly from former Soviet republics. <br><br>"The Schengen (visa regime) has restricted access of some citizens from eastern Europe to Italy. All eastern countries that had always wanted to buy 'Made in Italy' goods because of the quality can now come and buy these in Belgrade," he said. <br><br>"This will restore Italy's historic role of representing the bridge between the East and the West," Perniola said. <br><br>While Serbian companies will be able to collect a wide variety of consumer goods immediately upon customs fees payment, foreign firms will do so after paying 0.5 percent in administrative fees, he added. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948540779,4266,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>NATO aide says Montenegro shouldn't expect rescue</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Montenegro should not expect the United States or NATO to ride to its rescue if it declares independence from Yugoslavia, sparking a confrontation with Serbia, a senior NATO diplomat said on Friday. <br>He indicated the West would be more likely to react with harsher economic sanctions against Serbia than with military action if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown on the tiny republic. <br><br>Montenegro's elected pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, faces growing domestic pressure to hold a referendum on independence amid fears that Milosevic may use his security forces to destabilise the Podgorica government. <br><br>"How to bring leverage to bear to prevent a showdown is the dilemma facing all of us," the NATO diplomat said. <br><br>While the West supported Djukanovic's efforts to establish autonomy, democracy and a market economy, "he should be very careful not to provoke a showdown because he shouldn't count on being rescued by the U.S. or its allies," the envoy said. <br><br>It was the second warning this week against a plebiscite on indepedence. Wolfgang Petritsch, the West's top envoy in Bosnia, said on Wednesday that moves towards a referendum would spell civil war in Montenegro. <br><br>The NATO diplomat said he did not see immediate storm clouds in Montenegro because both sides were aware of the risks. <br><br>However, an incident last month in which Yugoslav troops briefly took over Podgorica airport had demonstrated Milosevic's ability to seize control, he said. <br><br>Opinion polls in Montenegro showed support for breaking away from Yugoslavia was tepid, the envoy added. Montenegro has been at odds with Serbia since Djukanovic was elected president in 1997 and began implementing market reforms. <br><br>Djukanovic told a news conference on Thursday he expected high tension between his republic and Milosevic's federal authorities to be resolved this year, but he did not say how. <br><br>"It is realistic to expect the Yugoslav political crisis to be resolved soon," he said. <br><br>NATO HOPES SANCTIONS WILL DETER MILOSEVIC <br><br>The diplomat said he hoped that NATO's "big stick" and the threat of harsher economic sanctions would deter Milosevic from using force in Montenegro. <br><br>"The Serbian economy remains a basket case...A much stricter sanctions regime of the kind we had in 1994-95 at the height of the Bosnian war could impose severe pain on his economy," the NATO envoy said. <br><br>NATO has maintained deliberate ambiguity about whether it would intervene militarily if Milosevic used the Yugoslav army to oust Djukanovic's government. <br><br>The West recogised the right of other constituent republics of former Yugoslavia to secede. But it has rejected the Kosovo Albanians' demands for independence, even after NATO waged an 11-week air war last year to drive Yugoslav troops out of the Serbian province. <br><br>The diplomat said the United States believed Kosovo's final status could not be usefully addressed now or for several years to come because there was no mutually acceptable outcome. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948540715,30386,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>FOCUS-Yugoslavia's neighbours discuss Balkan woes</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">HISARYA, Bulgaria, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Leaders of seven countries bordering Yugoslavia met on Friday with senior EU and NATO officials to discuss how to help crumbling economies and prevent more war in the troubled Balkans. <br>The informal summit in this Bulgarian spa resort is to discuss the international isolation of the Belgrade government blamed for much of the region's instability for the past decade. <br><br>"The goal of the meeting is to facilitate peace, to exchange ideas how we can overcome the Kosovo crisis and work for democratisation of the region," Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov said after the opening of the meeting. <br><br>"For the first time we are not generating problems but trying to find a solution," he told national television. <br><br>The meeting brings together the premiers of Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia with the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Sergio Balanzino. <br><br>All the participating countries have problems of their own, but share fears over Yugoslavia and its President Slobodan Milosevic, blamed for starting three wars in the past decade. <br><br>These sent hundreds of thousands of refugees to neighbouring states, and many of them have yet to return. <br><br>EASING OF SANCTIONS AGAINST BELGRADE MAY BE AN ISSUE <br><br>All participating states have suffered economic losses due to last year's war over Serbia's southern Kosovo province, and are seeking economic and political aid from the West as they try to join Europe's mainstream. <br><br>Kostov indicated he would raise the issue of easing economic sanctions against Yugoslavia which hit its neighbours badly. <br><br>"The embargo should be focused on those who are responsible for this crisis. It should be carried out in such a way that it does not affect ordinary people," he told Bulgarian television immediately after the formal start of the meeting. <br><br>The meeting has no formal agenda. Substantive talks are scheduled for Saturday, when the leaders are likely to seek answers from NATO and the EU on whether the Balkan Stability Pact launched by the major powers with fanfare last year is to become more than just fine words and good intentions. <br><br>So far little has been done to fill it with economic substance. Kostov said the project simply lacked funds. <br><br>Another issue, particularly important for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, is how to restore shipping on the Danube, blocked by the wreckage of bridges destroyed during last year's NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. <br><br>So far, the West has ruled out aid in clearing the Danube as long as Milosevic remains in power. <br><br>The countries south of Yugoslavia, especially Albania and Macedonia, which has a large ethnic Albanian minority, are concerned about Kosovo, where the international community has struggled to restore calm and build democracy. <br><br>Solana, who led NATO during the air war against Yugoslavia, visited Kosovo earlier on Friday and was likely to brief the meeting on his findings. <br><br>The participants are also likely to consider the standoff between Milosevic and pro-Western Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic in what remains of Yugoslavia. <br><br>Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta told reporters sanctions against Belgrade should avoid harming Montenegro.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948355416,92613,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Life in Serbia Defies Explanation</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By DANICA KIRKA <br><br>ALEKSINAC, Yugoslavia (AP) - If anyone in Serbia should hate the United States, it ought to be Zagorka Marinkovic.<br><br>Her house was obliterated when U.S. bombers blasted her neighborhood during last year's NATO 78-day bombing campaign. The family across the street died, along with 14 other people. Only the rubble left a lasting impression.<br><br>``Hate Americans? Oh no!'' she says, leaning forward to kiss her U.S. visitor. ``It takes two to tango, you know. You can't have a fight without two or three.''<br><br>Welcome to Serbia, where real life defies expectations - and often explanation.<br><br>After all, this is an authoritarian state where opposition newspapers denounce the government, where an accused war criminal appears as a television talk show guest, where a hotel celebrated Orthodox New Year's with a salute to the Depression-era 1930s and where twinkling red Christmas lights decorated the Socialist Party headquarters, which was blasted during the NATO bombing campaign.<br><br>Examples abound of this virtual reality, the dichotomy of a country that keeps running even though no one is really sure how. Oil is embargoed, yet traffic jams the cities. Businesses don't pay their workers, but people swarm cafes.<br><br>Fifty percent of the workforce is unemployed, but rush hour lasts all day long. A combative press manages to publish despite government harassment.<br><br>``Normal life is beyond comprehension for us,'' said author Slavoljub Djukic. ``One can adapt to suffering as well as peace. It's like an imposed reality.''<br><br>It wasn't even considered unusual this week when opposition politicians flatly accused President Slobodan Milosevic's government of gunning down the paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, known as ``Arkan.''<br><br>Nor was Arkan, shot in the head while at the swank Intercontinental Hotel, vilified for his past. Though his alleged underworld connections and war crimes indictment were well known, many in Serbia coughed up a good word on his behalf, praising Arkan's choice to take up arms in wars in Bosnia and Croatia.<br><br>His fighting unit, the Tigers, earned plaudits for being well-trained.<br><br>``He was famous for personally leading his own men even into the most dangerous military operations,'' the independent daily Blic said. ``Extreme discipline and obedience by members of the Tigers fascinated even Arkan's biggest enemies.''<br><br>The wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia have marked Serbia, a largely rural region the size of Maine. Scarred by a decade of international sanctions imposed because of Milosevic's warmongering, the official economy is in virtual collapse. The black market, however, flourishes.<br><br>A recession forces pensioners to stand in line at dawn to buy subsidized milk. Tens of thousands of laborers visit soup kitchens. Former professionals sell their old shoes in street markets.<br><br>The opposition mayor of Nis, Zoran Zivkovic, estimated that as many as 70 percent of the population lives near or at the poverty line. The average family in his city survives on about $28 a month.<br><br>Those struggling to make ends meet don't have to look far to see it can be worse: The region has been flooded by as many as 1 million Serb refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and most recently, Kosovo.<br><br>Struggling with the influx, the government has lodged Serb refugees in places like the Sicevo Gorge, a former holiday resort nestled against a hillside just outside of Nis, the country's third largest city.<br><br>Water leaks through the cracked walls of the resort's cabins. A single toilet is shared by dozens.<br><br>Elmije Novabrda, a cleaning lady from Kosovo, lives in one cabin with her husband and six children. Cradling her six-week old baby, she numbly tried to explain how her life had fallen apart.<br><br>``My children were so healthy. They had cheeks like apples. Now they are always sick,'' she said. ``Now we have nothing.''<br><br>People struggling with daily survival are too exhausted to worry about the future, much less efforts to oust Milosevic, opposition leaders say.<br><br>``Aside from those who actually lost family in the bombing, many have forgotten the war,'' Zivkovic said. ``They have other problems.''<br><br>The country has made modest efforts to rebuild, including the construction work in Aleksinac, 125 miles south of the capital, Belgrade. Milosevic himself cut the ribbon at the grand opening there of a rebuilt apartment building, painted in ``Miami Vice''-like hues of peach and green.<br><br>He also visited Mrs. Marinkovic's block, though she didn't speak to him directly. The government has given her help to rebuild and, given the circumstances, she says she feels blessed.<br><br>``God saved us,'' she said. ``We were lucky.'' </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948355354,45379,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>INTERVIEW-Envoy sees risk of Montenegrin civil war</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">SARAJEVO, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A Western envoy in the Balkans warned on Wednesday of possible civil war in Montenegro if the coastal republic tried to break away from Serbia and what remains of their Yugoslav federation. <br>Wolfgang Petritsch, the West's top peace envoy in Bosnia, also said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was likely to hold on to power as long as the splintered Serbian opposition were unable to unite. <br><br>"I believe he is going to hang on as long as the opposition is in such disarray," Petritsch, a former Austrian ambassador to Belgrade, told Reuters in an interview. <br><br>The Western-leaning leadership of Montenegro has threatened to hold a referendum on independence unless Belgrade agrees to reform the Yugoslav constitution to give Montenegro more autonomy, but Petritsch said such a vote would be a blueprint for disaster. <br><br>Moves towards independence "would basically spell civil war and that would of course be in favour of Milosevic," he said. <br><br>"There is a huge potential for a civil war there since about half of the population are actually sympathising, not so much with Milosevic, but with Serbia. <br><br>"They feel as Serbs and there was always a very close relationship between these two countries." <br><br>MURDER HIGHLIGHTS SERBIAN CRISIS <br><br>Petritsch, also a former European Union envoy on Kosovo, said Saturday's assassination of feared Serb warlord Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic highlighted what he described as the dismal state of Serbian society. <br><br>"They are in deep crisis," Petritsch said. "And at the centre of the crisis is of course Milosevic." <br><br>But change would not come as long as his political opponents were unable to show the people that they had a viable alternative, he said. <br><br>The opposition, split into several competing groups, last week reached what its leaders described as a landmark agreement to cooperate in their so far ineffectual campaign to oust Milosevic after a decade of Balkan wars. <br><br>"I know them all and this is a group of people who have good intentions but who lack in many ways the vision that would be necessary to get Yugoslavia out of this deep crisis," Petritsch said. <br><br>He stressed that it was up to the Serbian people to introduce change, and this should take place in a democratic way and not through a bloody revolution. <br><br>He said Milosevic had refused to sign the Rambouillet accord on Kosovo last March -- triggering NATO's bombing campaign against Belgrade -- because it would have brought a "huge onslaught" of democratisation in Serbia. <br><br>"And he, from his viewpoint rightly so, realised that is the greatest danger for him," Petritsch said. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948355318,83193,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Western officals discuss aid for Serb democracy</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Serbian opposition leaders met representatives of the United States and the European Union on Wednesday to discuss how they can help the democratisation of Serbia. <br>Officials from the pro-Western government of Montenegro, the smaller of Yugoslavia's two constituent republics, joined the meeting at Budva on the Montenegro coast. <br><br>Belgrade's independent radio B292 quoted a Portuguese envoy as saying the U.S. and EU representatives hoped for a unified opposition stance. <br><br>"We hope to hear from them what their needs are and we will see if we can meet their demands politically and financially," the envoy, Antonio Tanger Correia, said. Portugal currently holds the rotating EU presidency. <br><br>The talks follow what opposition leaders have called a landmark agreement between them to cooperate in a campaign to oust Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic that has so far proved ineffectual. <br><br>The Budva meeting is the second round of discussions under a newly-formed trilateral commission meant to strengthen ties between the Yugoslav opposition and the West. <br><br>The opposition wants Western humanitarian, financial and political support in its efforts to democratise Serbia and wants sanctions against the country lifted in exchange for fair and free elections. <br><br>"As far as I know the question of sanctions will be seriously examined," Correia was quoted as saying. <br><br>But Michael Graham, chief representative of the EU Commission in Belgrade, told B292 there was little probability of a concrete decision on lifting the sanctions. <br><br>EU ministers had to discuss the issue, he said. <br><br>"The Budva meeting will be another occasion for representatives of the international community to hear the stands of the opposition and to convey them to their superiors," Graham told B292. <br><br>Western officials, who are trying to isolate Milosevic with economic sanctions, have welcomed a January 10 agreement by the opposition to unite but have made clear that they want to see how the process progresses. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948279426,43520,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Milosevic Government Denies Role in Killing of Serbian Warlord</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The New York Times<br><br>By STEVEN ERLANGER<br><br>ELGRADE, Serbia, Jan. 18 -- The government of President Slobodan Milosevic had no role in the killing on Saturday of Zeljko Raznatovic, the notorious Serbian paramilitary leader known as Arkan, a senior Yugoslav government official said today. <br>"Arkan was simply a criminal, and he was killed by the Montenegrin mafia that wants to take over Belgrade," the Yugoslav information minister, Goran Matic, said in an interview. <br><br>He vouched for a report in today's issue of the government newspaper, Politika, that one of the gunmen had been seriously wounded and is in a hospital after an operation. <br><br><br>The newspaper Blic reported that the wounded man is hospitalized in Loznica, northeast of Belgrade near the Bosnian border. He is Dusan Gavric, about 25, and is from a village near Loznica, the newspaper said. Mr. Gavric was a member of Mr. Raznatovic's paramilitary group, the Tigers, since 1993. <br><br>While the gunman has so far not regained consciousness, Mr. Matic said, the police expect to be able to interrogate him about the murder. <br><br>Mr. Matic also promised new developments soon on a long-standing police investigation of the November 1997 gangland-style shooting of a politician close to Mr. Milosevic, Zoran Todorovic, known as Kunda. Mr. Todorovic was a close associate of Mr. Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic, and a senior official of her Yugoslav United Left party, and his death has also been widely laid at the door of the Milosevic government. <br><br>Mr. Matic's comments were the first explicit denial of widespread accusations by Serbian analysts and the political opposition that the Milosevic government and its security forces had murdered Mr. Raznatovic, the 47-year-old businessman, gangster and indicted war criminal, in a professionally organized hit on Saturday at Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel. <br><br>Together with the Politika report, which clearly came from official sources, Mr. Matic's comments were an effort to stop rampant speculation here that the murder had been politically motivated or had any relationship to Mr. Raznatovic's activities in the Croatian and Bosnian wars. There, he fought with his own Serbian Volunteer Guard and was indicted for his actions by the international tribunal for war crimes in The Hague. <br><br>Many in Belgrade believe that Mr. Raznatovic's hints that he might provide the tribunal information about the role of Mr. Milosevic and other Serbian officials in those wars was one of the reasons he might have been murdered. <br><br>But Mr. Raznatovic, clearly disaffected from Belgrade and allied with former police officials opposed to Ms. Markovic's party, was also making overtures to the political opposition in recent months. And he was a supporter of the president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, who broke with Mr. Milosevic and has moved closer to the West. <br><br>Mr. Raznatovic had wide business interests -- both open and criminal and financed from the profits of his earlier work with the secret police and the wars in Bosnia and Croatia -- that ranged from soccer clubs and bakeries to banking and gasoline smuggling. He is thought to have had no end of possible enemies. But his reputation and his extensive security made anything but a highly professional hit unlikely. <br><br>Killed with Mr. Raznatovic were a business associate in a casino, Milenko Mandic, known as Manda, and a senior police official with the Interior Ministry, Dragan Garic, believed to have been a colonel. <br><br>According to Politika, Mr. Garic and Mr. Mandic were killed simply so they could not identify the two assassins, one of whom came up to them in a cordoned off part of the lobby, greeted Mr. Raznatovic and then fired at the three from close range, escaping unharmed, while his associate was seriously wounded by a bodyguard before escaping. <br><br>Mr. Matic, similarly, explained the presence of the police official with Mr. Raznatovic as in the nature of his job, which was to deal with foreigners for the Interior Ministry. "His job meant dealing with foreigners, which meant that he was often in the Intercontinental Hotel," Mr. Matic said. <br><br>The fact that one of the assassins was wounded, and is in police custody in the hospital, and that a serious police investigation is under way, Politika asserted, should stop speculation about a political hit. <br><br><br>The police found the wounded gunmen by checking hospitals throughout Serbia, Mr. Matic said. "The gunman had the option of dying or going to a hospital," Mr. Matic said. But Mr. Matic confirmed that the police had not yet been able to talk to the man, and that he is "in serious condition." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948279340,43795,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Balkan unrest causes Greece headaches </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Holger Jensen<br><br>ATHENS, Greece -- It doesn't take long here to realize that Greece is as much a part of the war-torn Balkans as it is a NATO ally and Mediterranean tourist resort.<br><br>Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, Greece borders Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and what's left of Yugoslavia, is only an hour's flying time from Athens.<br><br>Greece accounts for more than half the productivity of an otherwise poor and unstable region. It is the biggest investor in countries to the north, which buy 12 percent of Greek exports and return the favor by sending a flood of unwanted migrants southward.<br><br>Albanian illegals do the menial labor that Greeks won't do, and are viewed in the same light as Mexican illegals in the United States. Their number has increased dramatically since the Kosovo war; no one knows how many there are but 125,000 were apprehended last year and Greek officials are the first to admit this is merely a fraction of those who made it across their porous borders without getting caught.<br><br>Greeks despise Albanian Muslims and fear a "greater Albania" much more than they do a "greater Serbia." Like the Serbs, they are quite racist in blaming Albanians for most of Southern Europe's drug smuggling and organized crime.<br><br>"They breed like rabbits," said one high-ranking official in the Greek Foreign Ministry, "and display irredentist aggression" toward other ethnic groups, suggesting they want a single Albanian state encompassing not only Albania but also Kosovo and Macedonia.<br><br>Greece is also at odds with Macedonia, whom it accuses of creating an "artificial nationalism" on what used to be Greek soil, while condemning that country's sizeable Albanian minority for setting up parallel government institutions similar to those that gave Slobodan Milosevic the excuse he needed to crack down on the Albanian majority in Kosovo.<br><br>Yet Greeks show no particular kinship with Slavic Serbs either, even though both share the Eastern Orthodox religion. Rather, they feel as Americans would if NATO had bombed Mexico, leaving us to deal with the fallout of a lost trade and a host of unwanted refugees.<br><br>As if that were not enough, Greece also has to contend with a hostile Turkey across the Aegean Sea. Most Americans are blithely unaware of the fact that the two NATO allies routinely scramble jets -- often hundreds of times a year -- to counter real or imagined threats from each other.<br><br>The two countries have not fought a war since 1821. But they have detested each other since the Turks overran Greece in 1460 and made it part of the Ottoman Empire for the next 350 years. Although the Greeks finally attained independence in 1827 they continued to be ruled by foreign kings, princes or German occupiers until after World War II.<br><br>Although Turkey and Greece both joined NATO in 1951, they were allies in name only. Four years later the Turkish government orchestrated "spontaneous" attacks on the Greek minority in Constantinople (now Istanbul), causing a sizeable casualties and a mass exodus of Greeks.<br><br>Further flight occurred in 1964 when Turkey began expropriating Greek properties and shut down all minority schools on the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. The Greek population of those islands shrank from 8,000 to 250, and that of Constantinople declined from approximately 120,000 to fewer than 2,000. Communal clashes on Cyprus added to the tension and prompted the dispatch of a U.N. peacekeeping force. The Delaware-sized island is only 60 miles off the Turkish coast but its population is predominantly Greek. One of the conditions attached to its independence from Britain in 1960 was that neither community would seek union with Athens or Ankara.<br><br>But Cyprus was split in 1974 after a short-lived coup by extremists wanting to unite with Greece. Turkish invaders seized 38% of the island, establishing a northern "Turkish Republic" recognized by no one but Ankara, while the Greeks kept their "Republic of Cyprus" in the south.<br><br>A "green line" manned by United Nations troops separates the two. And Turkey still has 35,000 troops and 300 tanks in the northern sector, saying they are needed to protect the Turkish minority.<br><br>In the shallow Aegean, where the continental shelf between the two countries is virtually one and the same, they keep contesting the ownership of islands and mineral rights. <br><br>In 1996, Athens said it would extend its territorial waters from 6 miles to 12 to discourage what it called unauthorized Turkish oil exploration. Turkey objected to making the Aegean a "Greek lake" and nearly went to war over two islets inhabited only by goats.<br><br>Greece also claims a 10-mile air limit, as opposed to Turkey's six-mile limit, which Ankara deliberately ignores.<br><br>The United States has tried to remain neutral in these disputes, but Greece accuses Washington of favoring Turkey because it has NATO's second-largest army and guards the alliance's southern flank.<br><br>Konstantin Gerokostopoulos, director of the department for Greek-Turkish relations in the Foreign Ministry, complains that U.S. neutrality, "despite American maps that clearly define Greek territory, simply encourages the spurious claims of the Turks.<br><br>There is also lingering Greek resentment of U.S. support for a harsh military junta during the Cold War. A 1967 coup, led by the late Col. George Papadopoulos, toppled the parliamentary government after years of political instability, which many Greeks blamed on what they saw as U.S. meddling in Greek affairs.<br><br>The junta imposed an ultraconservative regime that did not permit political dissent or free expression at a time when much of Western Europe was being transformed by student protests and underground movements. In a harsh crackdown on student demonstrators in 1973, the military regime jailed hundreds of opponents, tortured many and banished others to barren islands.<br><br>On a November visit to Greece, President Clinton apologized that "the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the Cold War to prevail over its interest, I should say its obligation, to support democracy."<br><br>But that did not stop thousands of Greek demonstrators from taking to the streets, as they do every year on Nov. 17, to denounce the United States and mark the anniversary of the junta's 1973 crackdown. Anti-NATO protests added to the mayhem, with hooded protesters setting fires and smashing storefronts in central Athens.<br><br>Clinton, branded a "fascist and murderer," was forced to cut short a three-day visit to little over a day.<br><br>Given the fact that 97 percent of the Greek populace opposed NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, their government went out on a considerable limb supporting it. Prime Minister Costas Simitis provided a port, Thesalonika, for the entry of NATO troops and has contributed peacekeepers for Kosovo.<br><br>More importantly, Greece has dropped its longstanding opposition to Turkey joining the European Union, hoping this will pave the way for eventual settlement of the Cyprus, Aegean and other disputes with a belligerent neighbor.<br><br>"We did this not because we want Washington to 'owe us one,' but because we believe it is good for NATO, for the E.U. and, ultimately, for Greece," said Gerokostopoulos. "It is in our best interests to have peaceful relations and economic interchange with all our neighbors.<br><br>"But it will take a long time. And Americans should understand that this is a rough neighborhood. When the souvlaki (he used another word) hits the fan, we get splattered."</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948279266,28762,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro seek closer links</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">OHRID, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro agreed Tuesday to develop direct links, clearly aiming to free themselves from the influence of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's sanctions-bound government. <br>"The prime ministers committed themselves to efforts for reconstruction and the building of roads, railways, telecommunications, oil pipeline links and power supply network in the region," said a joint statement after the leaders met. <br><br>Filip Vujanovic, prime minister of Montenegro -- still part of Yugoslavia but gradually moving away from the larger republic Serbia -- said his foreign minister would meet his Albanian counterpart soon to discuss opening up their common border. <br><br>Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta told reporters: "We discussed opening border crossings between Albania and Montenegro, modernizing the railway line, road connections, electricity links between Podgorica and Elbasan ... . I believe no one has a right to isolate the citizens of the two countries." <br><br>Belgrade protested strongly when Montenegro opened a border crossing with Croatia in 1998 without consulting it and Yugoslav troops stopped an attempt by Montenegrin police to take over a part of the republic's airport in December. <br><br>"The future ... depends on peace, respect of territorial integrity, borders and minority rights," Vujanovic said after the talks, held at the Macedonian lake resort of Ohrid. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948279236,39562,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serb opposition seeks more aid from the West</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbian opposition leaders said they will seek Wednesday to convince Europe and the United States that they have overcome their differences and persuade the West to back them up with more aid. <br>Dragoslav Avramovic, a former central bank governor and the icon of one wing of the splintered opposition, told a news conference it had three aid projects to discuss. <br><br>"We expect tomorrow's meeting to be on the level of experts and to clarify the steps to be taken, funds to be addressed and a deadline for effecting these projects," Avramovic said. <br><br>Avramovic and other opposition leaders will outline the projects in Budva, on the coast of Montenegro, to officials from the United States and European Union. <br><br>Officials from the smaller Yugoslav republic's pro-Western government also are due to take part in what will be the second round of discussions under a newly formed trilateral commission meant to strengthen ties between the opposition and the West. <br><br>The talks follow what the opposition politicians, who are split into several competing groups, have called a landmark agreement between them to cooperate in their so far ineffectual campaign to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Western officials, who are trying to isolate Milosevic with economic sanctions, have welcomed the Jan. 10 agreement but made clear they want to see how it progresses. <br><br>"It's very positive, giving some hope," an EU official based in Belgrade said last week, asking not to be named. <br><br>"Of course, we've seen something similar in the past. We want to see the opposition cement together. We should not go overboard right now," he said. <br><br> <br><br>OPPOSITION SEEKS AMMUNITION FOR PROPAGANDA WAR <br><br>The opposition politicians hope to keep the focus on aid to help them counter government charges that they are traitors whose links with the West have not helped ordinary Serbs. <br><br>"We are well aware that every meeting of this kind poses a threat to the opposition's public image," Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic told the same news conference. <br><br>The first project outlined by Avramovic was a six-month plan to deliver heating oil to 23 Serbian towns, at a cost of $14 million. Some of the proposed towns are controlled by the government. <br><br>The European Union launched fuel deliveries in November under a plan called Energy for Democracy, but only two towns, both run by Milosevic's foes, so far have received fuel. <br><br>The deliveries initially were held up by what the EU said were deliberate attempts at sabotage by Belgrade. They have since moved forward but more slowly than the opposition would like. <br><br>Avramovic said the second project aimed to distribute humanitarian parcels to the families in urgent need, initially in 13 towns and later throughout Serbia. <br><br>The third project was the "most ambitious," he said, adding that it should help about 40 percent of Serbia's pensioners. <br><br>"Pensioners with monthly income worth less than 50 German ($26) would receive 60 marks ($32) every three months. The money would be paid in hard currency," he said. <br><br>If approved, the project would last two years and compensate for the fall in real value of pensions. <br><br>Djindjic said negotiations with the West were not easy. <br><br>"If you are not the legitimate negotiator, if you are not the government and if you lack the institutional support it is hard to get results in negotiating with international institutions," he said. "It is a success that we are recognized as a partners in negotiations and that we discuss issues in a professional way." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948197971,463,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Belgrade imposes official news blackout on Arkan assassination </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>The Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, is to be buried on Thursday at a low-key ceremony for family and friends only, the party of the assassinated paramilitary leader said yesterday. <br><br>The sources from Raznatovic's Serbian Unity Party said he would be buried on Thursday morning at Belgrade's Novo Groblje cemetery, close to the city centre. <br><br>The burial of Raznatovic, who was shot dead on Saturday in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in Belgrade, will follow a memorial service tomorrow at a small cinema in the central Syndicate House. <br><br>The party sources declined to comment on the reasons for such a muted farewell to the Serbian nationalist – once close to the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic – who had been indicted by the United Nations war-crimes tribunal for alleged atrocities during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. <br><br>The country's leaders have been accused by the opposition of ordering the murder to silence a man who knew too much, and it is widely believed in Belgrade that the Raznatovic family, his football club (the Belgrade team Obilic) and the party are playing by the regime's rules. "It amounts to an official embargo on publicity on the case," an analyst in Belgrade said, insisting on anonymity. <br><br>This theory has been bolstered by the unusually thin coverage of Raznatovic's assassination by the official media, the powerful Radio-Television of Serbia (RTS) and the pro-government Politika daily newspaper. RTS covered his death with one laconic sentence, and Politika's coverage has been restrained. But for the private and independent media, the stories on the killing of Arkan, a powerful businessman with links to the criminal underworld, have been heading news bulletins. <br><br>In the absence of any official word on the police investigation into the murder, speculation continued to be rife yesterday as to whether Raznatovic's links to the underworld had motivated the killing or whether the regime of Mr Milosevic may have been involved. <br><br>The first reaction to the murder from a member of the ruling élite was guarded. Radmilo Bogdanovic, a senior member of Mr Milosevic's Socialist Party and a former interior minister, played down the claim that the authorities were to blame. <br><br>"The easiest thing for them to do is to call it state terrorism, but I see no way to link those things," Mr Bogdanovic said. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948197926,69838,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Apology for girl’s death in Kosovo </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">ASSOCIATED PRESS <br> <br>A U.S. peacekeeper in Kosovo is in custody, charged with a grisly crime against a little girl, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports. <br> <br> VITINA, Yugoslavia, Jan. 17 — The top U.S. military official in Kosovo sent his condolences to the family of an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl who was sexually assaulted and killed, allegedly by an American soldier serving in Kosovo. <br> <br> <br> ‘I did not know your daughter but as a father I feel a deep sense of loss and can imagine your pain.’ <br>— BRIG. GEN. RICARDO SANCHEZ<br> “ON BEHALF of KFOR and the U.S. military presence in Kosovo, I want to express to you our most heartfelt sympathy on the death of your daughter,” read a personal letter by Brig. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, released Monday.<br> Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, serving with the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, was charged Sunday with sexually assaulting and killing the ethnic Albanian girl, the U.S. military said Sunday.<br> It is the first time a peacekeeper from any country has been accused of such serious crimes since the 50,000-strong peacekeeping force arrived in June.<br> “I did not know your daughter but as a father I feel a deep sense of loss and can imagine your pain,” Sanchez’s letter said. “I cannot say I know how you feel but I know how I feel. ... The department of the army will spare no effort in bringing this matter to justice.”<br> <br>INCIDENT THREATENS RELATIONS<br> The incident has threatened relations between the Americans and the Kosovo civilians the peacekeepers were sent to protect. The peacekeepers arrived after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his bloody crackdown against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority. <br> <br> “We don’t want them here to give us security if they are going to do this,” said Muharram Samakova, a neighbor of the girl’s family.<br> Ronghi, 35, is a weapons squad leader assigned to A Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, N.C. His home town was not immediately known. He was being held in detention at nearby Camp Bondsteel pending transfer to the U.S. Army’s confinement facility in Mannheim, Germany. The army said Sunday it will appoint an officer to conduct a pretrial investigation and recommend whether Ronghi should be court-martialed. <br> The girl’s body was found late Thursday in the countryside near the city of Vitina, 45 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Pristina, the army said. A senior U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Saturday that the girl appeared to have been raped before she was killed.<br><br> Shabiu said he last saw his daughter early Thursday when she left to go to the market. She did not return. Neighbors in an apartment complex across the street told him she had been killed in the basement of the building.<br> “They killed her 20 meters (yards) away from the house,” he said. “They took her — she was only 11 1/2 years old.”<br> Serbian state-run television, which regularly criticizes the NATO peacekeeping mission, said Sunday evening that the case “exposed an unprecedented disgrace.”<br> The U.S. peacekeepers are widely seen as heroes by Kosovo Albanians because of Washington’s role in the NATO bombing campaign. On Sunday, groups of ethnic Albanian children could be seen milling around U.S. military vehicles, laughing, chatting and playing with the soldiers.<br> However, neighbors of the Shabiu family were outraged. <br> <br> Hxsen Islami said local residents had filed complaints with the U.S. command in Vitina about male soldiers searching young girls for weapons. He said the complaints had gotten no response.<br> “I’m sorry, but they are touching the girls,” Islami said.<br> U.S. military officials at the main headquarters at Camp Bondsteel said they knew nothing about such complaints. Brig. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the head of Kosovo’s American forces, met Saturday night with community leaders in Vitina and offered his condolences to the family.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948108909,53563,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Serbian 'Tiger' warlord dies in hail of gunfire </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Sunday Times<br>Tom Walker <br> <br>THE notorious Serbian warlord Arkan was shot and killed last night by masked gunmen in the lobby of a Belgrade hotel. <br>Witnesses said Arkan, 47, an indicted war criminal accused of ordering the killing of thousands of Muslims during the war in Bosnia, was hit three times in the face when two unidentified men sprayed the lobby of the Hotel Intercontinental with automatic fire. <br><br>One of the men was later reported to have been arrested. Arkan was rushed to an emergency clinic in Belgrade's central hospital, where he was pronounced dead. <br><br>One of his bodyguards was killed and a female kickboxer who had been sitting with him in a cordoned-off area of the lobby was seriously injured. <br><br>Arkan, whose real name was Zeljko Raznatovic, became notorious as head of the Tiger paramilitaries responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Bosnian and Croatian wars. A flamboyant figure with a beautiful pop star wife, he was also reputedly Serbia's richest man, thanks to profits from organised crime. <br><br>He was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague in September 1997, but the indictment was kept under wraps until the Nato air campaign in the Balkans began last March. There were rumours he may have been involved in atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, but it was never proven. Arkan was also wanted by Interpol, and had previously escaped from police in Belgium, Germany and Sweden. <br><br>There was immediate speculation in Belgrade that Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, might have been behind the attack. Sources close to Arkan, including his lawyer Giovanni di Stefano, had said recently that he was submitting evidence to the Hague, and this could have provided vital evidence in any eventual trial of Milosevic. Arkan was confident that charges against him might be dropped if he cooperated with prosecutors. <br><br>Bob Stewart, former British UN commander in Bosnia, said he believed, however, that Arkan was more likely to have been killed by members of a rival mafia group. "It doesn't seem very much of a surprise that someone has decided to do what I could almost call the decent thing," he said. <br><br>Arkan, who married Ceca, a Serbian "turbofolk" star, in a garish ceremony in 1995, had lived a charmed existence in Belgrade for years, apparently believing he was beyond the law. He was wanted for bank robberies in western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s and was also believed to have amassed wealth from war profiteering. <br><br>Martin Bell, the independent MP who met Arkan while a BBC reporter in the Balkans, described him as having considerable charisma. "Somehow I doubt that Arkan will die in his bed," he wrote. <br><br>Bloody king of the mobsters <br><br>WITH his fake military uniforms, ceremonial swords, gun-toting female bodyguards and lissome pop star wife, Arkan, the Serbian warlord who died after being shot in a Belgrade hotel last night, had come to epitomise the new Serbia at its most vulgar and corrupt. <br>An indicted war criminal accused of widespread ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity during the Croatian and Bosnian wars at the head of a gang of paramilitaries who called themselves the Tigers, he was also a notorious racketeer and gangster who made a fortune from gun running and drug dealing. <br><br>For the past decade Arkan, the son of a senior Yugoslav army officer, had thrived from the rich pickings to be gleaned from constant war and social dislocation. <br><br>Born on April 17, 1952, in Slovenia, he dropped out of school and was first jailed at 17 for theft. He became a hitman for the Yugoslav secret police before embarking on a criminal career that took him on bank robbing sprees across Europe. <br><br>He escaped from a prison in Belgium, shot his way out of a courtroom in Sweden, and escaped from a guarded hospital room in Frankfurt before eventually taking refuge within the growing anarchy of the collapsing Yugoslavia. <br><br>Using his influence as the leader of the Red Star Belgrade football supporters club, he quickly established an underground network of thugs and assassins that metamorphosed into the Tigers. They saw their first action in the Serbo-Croatian war of 1991 and 1992, helping Serb communities in Croatia cleanse large territories which were then declared autonomous Serb republics. <br><br>In 1993 the Tigers took their killing to northern Bosnia, where Arkan enthusiastically drove thousands of Muslims from their homes. Some of the most brutal killing was around the Bijelina area near the Serbian border, and rumours went around that Arkan was to be seen on videos in which his victims were chainsawed to death. <br><br>As his power grew Arkan became impervious to the law, and did as he saw fit in Belgrade. He built a garish villa outside the Red Star ground, and bizarrely included a cake shop on the ground floor. <br><br>He was officially listed as a baker; unofficially, he ran a multitude of smuggling rackets across the former Yugoslavia, using his connections in the police and customs to earn a vast fortune. Apart from the bankers and state industry captains in Slobodan Milosevic's inner circle, Arkan became Yugoslavia's richest and most dangerous man. <br><br>He made few excuses for his continued cleansing operations in Bosnia. "We are warriors in our blood. My grandfather fought the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans. My father was a partisan," he said shortly before his third wedding in 1995, to Ceca, Serbia's most glamorous "turbofolk" singer. <br><br>The ceremony, featuring Arkan in a second world war marshal's uniform, was carried live on a new television station, Palma, famous also for its midnight pornography. <br><br>Arkan became a member of parliament early in the decade, and was given a convenient vote-rigging seat in the rebellious province of Kosovo. He quickly established close ties with the Albanian mafia, with whom he ran an efficient drug smuggling operation from Turkey and up through Serbia and Bosnia into western Europe. <br><br>Later he abandoned his allegiance to Red Star Belgrade and patronised his own football club, Obilic, whom he transformed into Yugoslav champions. Unable to travel with the club in Europe because of Interpol warrants for his arrest, Arkan sent Ceca instead. <br><br>His relationship with Milosevic was always shrouded in mystery, but most analysts believed Arkan knew too much about the Yugoslav leader for comfort. Through his lawyer Giovanni de Stefano, Arkan had made representations to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, where he protested his innocence of charges of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. <br><br>Arkan was secretly indicted by the Hague in 1997, and the charges were made public last March. Sources close to him, however, said he appeared to have believed he could do a deal in which he provided evidence against Milosevic that would ensure his own immunity from punishment. It was the most risky game he could have played. <br><br>Ironically, Ceca, in the video from her new album Ceca 2000, is depicted shooting the lover of her husband, whom she then frames for the attack. Ceca was not with Arkan in the attack on the Intercontintental, and nor were his famed new band of female bodyguards. <br><br>There was a rumour in Belgrade that one of Arkan's oldest sons had an affair with Ceca, and the singer did sport a black eye two years ago. Nevertheless she protested to the end that she loved her man. "If God will allow me I will bear to Arkan another son," she said in a recent television interview. <br><br>Most recently Arkan made himself known to the international press corps by swaggering around Belgrade's Hyatt hotel during Nato airstrikes, his pot-bellied cronies often at his side. He formed a new private army called the Serbian Defence Force, which he always insisted was not involved in the Kosovo campaign. <br><br>He was affable enough socially, with a firm handshake and cheery demeanour; his eyes, though, were noted for their coldness, and he would quickly fly into a fury. <br><br>Harald Doornbos, a Dutch television correspondent, was once literally thrown out of Arkan's house after quizzing him on his police record, and Arkan grabbed the tape from his cameraman and smashed it against the wall. <br><br>The men who needed him dead <br><br>THE most popular theory for Arkan's killing was that he had sent evidence to the Hague implicating Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, in war crimes, write Tom Walker and Edin Hamzic. <br>Police sources in Belgrade had warned Arkan he was sailing close to the wind, but he always believed that his bodyguards were a match for any assassin that Milosevic might send his way. <br><br>Milosevic has been linked in the past with ruthless murders, including the shooting during Nato airstrikes of Slavko Curuvija, a newspaper editor. <br><br>"Only the man at the top could have done this," said one former policeman close to the Milosevic security apparatus. "The only thing done professionally over the past five years in Belgrade is murder. <br><br>"But this shows that the regime is really losing it, that they're seriously desperate. Arkan had been loyal over the years, after all. A lot of other people must now be worried." <br><br>Through his dominance of the underworld, Arkan had made many enemies apart from the head of state, and Serbia has over the past two years become a much more criminalised society. <br><br>The city's elite cemetery in the park beneath Milosevic's Dedenje villa is a tribute to the gangster fraternity's fallen; several of the larger and more ornate tombstones honouring friends of the president and his son Marko. <br><br>Arkan could have clashed with Marko himself, or any number of leaders of the so-called "Vozdovacki Clan", a mafia elite spawned in the past two years largely from gangsters returning to Yugoslavia from the Serbian diaspora. Arkan is supposed to have traded at various times in drugs, guns, prostitutes and alcohol - which all constitute a lucrative and fiercely fought businesses in the Balkans. <br><br>Another theory circulating in Belgrade last night was that Arkan had clashed with the Albanian mafia. One witness claimed that one of the assassins seen fleeing the Hotel Intercontinental was heard shouting in Albanian. There was also speculation that Arkan had attempted to cut off the Albanian drug-running routes through Serbia after Nato airstrikes. <br><br>It was also posited that the Kosovo Liberation Army could have used its underworld contacts to eliminate Arkan, although equally it could be argued that the KLA relied on Arkan for weapons procurement. <br><br>Others potentially with an interest in the ending of Arkan's reign included Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, two Bosnian Serb warlords and indicted war criminals with similar fears to Milosevic - namely, that when it came to the Hague, Arkan knew too much. Neither man has much influence in modern Belgrade, however. <br><br>Another potential source of friction was his football club, Obilic. On several occasions last year he was accused of match fixing, and several of the figures behind Belgrade's two traditional giants, Red Star and Partisan, would have gladly seen Arkan removed from the sports scene. <br><br>During the Nato airstrikes Arkan's casino in the Hotel Yugoslavia was destroyed, and he is believed to have been anxious to reestablish himself in the casino business. His wife Ceca also had a perfume shop in the Hotel Intercontinental.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948106315,28112,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Arkan murder 'may have had state backing' </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Financial Times<br><br>The opposition claims Arkan's killing confirms government links with terrorism, writes Irena Guzelova in Belgrade<br><br>Early suspicions that the murder of Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, was gangland-inspired have given way to opposition speculation that it may have been officially sanctioned.<br><br>Arkan and two of his bodyguards were shot when gunmen opened fire in Belgrade's Intercontinental hotel on Saturday afternoon. Arkan later died in hospital.<br><br>Reputedly one of Serbia's wealthiest individuals, Arkan was a longtime ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<br><br>His murder was the latest in a series of unsolved killings of both business-linked and political leaders.<br><br>"There were only two people who used to be behind such murders, Arkan and Milosevic," said a former police official.<br><br>Opposition leaders claim the killing shows the government intends to spread fear and insecurity in Serbia. The regime, increasingly intolerant of dissent and intent on consolidating its power, has stepped up its surveillance within its own ruling coalition, the judiciary and media.<br><br>The government made no comment on the assassination, and the state-controlled newspaper Politika only reported the murder on page 20.<br><br>"Someone who knew a lot and took part in many things was killed," said Goran Svilanovic, a leader of the anti-Milosevic Civic Alliance, saying that Arkan "was very close to the authorities, or so it seemed".<br><br>"This is further confirmation that we are living in a country of state terrorism," said a statement from Serbia's largest opposition party, led by Vuk Draskovic, who claims he was also the victim of an assassination attempt last year.<br><br>A Muslim leader in Bosnia, where Arkan's "Tiger" militia allegedly killed and terrorised hundreds of civilians, said the paramilitary leader may have known details linking Mr Milosevic with war crimes.<br><br>There is no shortage of people who would have wished Arkan dead. A leading figure in the underworld whose criminal record went back to the 1970s, Arkan was under indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for alleged war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia.<br><br>He used his football club Obilic as a front for his business deals.<br><br>His attack, carrying all the signs of a professional murder, could have been inspired by any number of motives.<br><br>"Hustling and corruption are enormous and people are living without any money," said Toma Fila, a lawyer acting on behalf of some of the Serbs indited for war crimes.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948106253,73909,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Arkan's Death Frustrates Officials Who Wanted His War Crimes Testimony </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Misha Savic <br><br>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — The gangland-style slaying of Serbia's most notorious paramilitary leader was aimed at silencing a man who could tie key figures in President Slobodan Milosevic's government with Balkan war crimes, opposition members claimed Sunday. <br><br>Zeljko Raznatovic, a hero to radical Serb nationalists and symbol of terror to thousands of non-Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, was gunned down Saturday in a plush Belgrade hotel as he sat in a sectioned-off part of the lobby. <br><br>One source said Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, was shot in the eye. Two of his bodyguards were also killed in the hail of bullets, and the assailants escaped. <br><br>"Someone was making sure that one of the key people who knew too much should not live too long," said Mirza Hajric, adviser to Muslim member of the Bosnian presidency, Alija Izetbegovic. "Unfortunately, he missed an opportunity to testify against President Milosevic." <br><br>Arkan, 47, had been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague for atrocities committed by his "Tigers" militia during secessionist wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. <br><br>Arkan's Tigers were purportedly organized in the early 1990s by Milosevic's secret police to fight alongside government troops in Bosnia and Croatia. That enabled Milosevic's government to try to disassociate itself from the ethnic cleansing and other atrocities committed during those conflicts. <br><br>Belgrade police issued no statement about the killing, and witnesses gave conflicting reports about whether one or more assailants were involved. <br><br>However, Arkan was often seen in the company of senior police and security officials. The links between Arkan and the government led to speculation among Serbian opposition figures and others that the killing was meant to silence Arkan. <br> <br><br>Milosevic and several other key government figures were indicted by The Hague court last year. Two months ago, reports in the independent Belgrade media claimed Arkan was considering fleeing to the West. The reports, denied by Arkan's lawyer, also said he was trying to cut a back-room deal with the war crimes tribunal to testify against Milosevic in exchange for immunity from prosecution. <br><br>And Arkan's killing was not unprecedented: More than a dozen prominent journalists, police, politicians and underworld figures have been victims of unsolved murders in Belgrade since 1991. <br><br>"A number of people who had a prominent role in the past wars are vanishing in professionally organized murders," said opposition politician Zarko Korac. <br><br>While independent media covered the murder as its top story, official newspapers and broadcasters barely mentioned the slaying. <br><br>The main state-run newspaper, Politika, published its report on page 20 of its Sunday edition. State-run television reported the death at the end of its late Saturday newscast — just before the weather report. <br><br>Elsewhere, international officials expressed regret that Arkan would never be called to account for his actions in Balkan wars before a court of law. Jacques Klein, the chief U.N. representative in Bosnia, called Arkan a "psychopathic mass murderer." <br><br>"The sad part of all of this is that he was not actually brought to justice, that he was not brought to The Hague," Klein said. <br><br>U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the United States takes "no satisfaction" in Arkan's death and "would have wanted him to stand trial in The Hague for his crimes." <br><br>But in Belgrade, some shed tears for Arkan, who had won popularity by relentlessly whipping up Serb nationalism. A crowd swarmed to the hospital where an ambulance brought Arkan after the shooting, and men and women cried as they were told the man known as "babyface killer" was dead. <br><br>After the Bosnian and Croatian wars, Arkan settled in Belgrade and married a folk singer with whom he had two children. He is also survived by seven other children from his previous marriages. <br><br>Arkan's funeral was scheduled for Wednesday. His body will lie in state beginning Tuesday at the Serbian Unity Party headquarters in the plush Dedinje district in Belgrade. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948106191,56496,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Flu kills dozens, but epidemic may soon be over</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ The flu epidemic raging in Yugoslavia over the past three weeks has killed dozens of people, but seems to be ebbing, media reported Saturday. <br>Flu killed at least nine people in the northern city of Subotica, the Belgrade daily Glas reported. It also listed several other towns in Serbia and Montenegro _ the two Yugoslav republics _ where hospitals also recorded increased deaths from the flu. <br><br>The latest official estimate of cases of flu put the number of people affected at 82,000 in Serbia and 44,000 in Montenegro, but real figures are likely higher because many flu victims do not go to a doctor. <br><br>On Friday, 2,602 new cases were recorded in Belgrade _ the first decrease in daily rate since the outbreak began last month. Health authorities said this may be an indication the epidemic could be over in a week or two. <br><br>In the southwestern town of Uzice, the number of deaths rose by about 20 percent over the last three weeks, local health officials said. A similar increase was reported in the northern town of Novi Sad, also as apparent consequence of the flu epidemic. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem948106160,87352,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>American Soldier Charged With Ethnic Albanian Girl’s Murder</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">Staff Sergeant Also Charged with Committing Indecent Acts <br>Reuters<br> <br>By Andrew Gray<br><br>VITINA, Serbia, Jan 16 — A U.S. soldier in Kosovo was charged today with the murder of a local 12-year-old ethnic Albanian girl, U.S. forces said.<br> The soldier, 35-year-old Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, was also charged with committing indecent acts with a child, the chief of staff for Kosovo’s U.S.-led military sector said.<br> “I’d like to express our heartfelt and deepest condolences to the family of the victim,” a sombre Colonel Ellis Golson told reporters at Camp Bondsteel, the main U.S. base in Kosovo.<br> Outside the girl’s home in the town of Vitina, about 9 miles from the giant U.S. camp in eastern Kosovo, neighbors gathered to offer sympathy and support to her family. <br>Anger at U.S. Forces<br>Some expressed anger at U.S. forces in general. But the victim’s distraught father, clutching a photograph from U.S. military authorities of his daughter on a mortuary slab, said he he did not hold the entire force responsible.<br> “You can’t blame the whole army. You can’t blame the commander,” said Hamdi Shabiu, sobbing sometimes as he talked to reporters outside his home. “We want to know who this soldier was... Why did they allow such a soldier to come here?”<br> The picture he held showed the head of his daughter Merite, her skin pale and apparently bruised, resting on a white pillow with her light brown hair pulled back.<br> The killing prompted shock in Vitina and around Kosovo, which is home to more than 40,000 troops from the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force. They began deploying last June after alliance bombing drove Serb forces out of the province.<br> Although no longer met with the grand displays of gratitude which marked their arrival, KFOR troops are generally given a warm reception by Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians, who see them as a guarantee against the return of the Serb forces that terrorized them.<br> The case is the first time a KFOR soldier has been suspected of such a serious crime.<br> “The very reason that KFOR came here was to stop violence,” KFOR commander General Klaus Reinhardt said in a statement. “To discover that one of our own members may have been involved in the ultimate act of violence — murder — fills me with horror and anger.” <br><br>Body Found Outside Vitina<br>U.S. troops found Merite’s body two miles outside Vitina on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces said.<br> Ronghi, from the Third Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina but currently stationed in Vitina, was immediately detained, Major Debbie Allen told reporters.<br> She understood Ronghi had served in the army for more than 12 years.<br> The killer had attacked the girl, Allen said, but the exact cause of death was still part of the investigation, as was the question of whether she had been raped.<br> She said the indecency charge specified that “an act occurred with a child under 16 years of age that was for sexual gratification or stimulation of the person who did it.”<br> Brigadier General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the U.S. forces in Kosovo, met with Vitina leaders on Saturday evening.<br> “They discussed how important it is to continue relations,” Allen said.<br> “The unit has a good relationship in this community. They have been there a few months, they have established a position there that has been welcomed by the people,” she told reporters at Bondsteel. “This is an isolated situation.” </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947844683,89314,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center></center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">FOCUS-Milosevic loyalists challenge Montenegro<br>PODGORICA, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic held a large, defiant rally in Montenegro on Thursday, clearly aimed at warning the republic's Western-backed government not to try to break away. <br>Thousands of people packed the main square of the capital Podgorica for the event, held to mark Orthodox New Year's Eve. <br><br>Heavily-armed police and anti-riot brigades from the republic, which is gradually edging away from Belgrade, deployed around the parliament, government and other key buildings but stayed away from the rally. <br><br>"Yugoslavia! Yugoslavia! Serbia! Serbia!" the crowd chanted while performers played nationalist songs from Serbia, which dominates the two-republic Yugoslav federation that Montenegro's reformist government has threatened to quit. <br><br>As midnight struck, Zorica Taic-Rabrenovic from the Milosevic-backed Socialist People's Party compared the Serbs to Jesus Christ. <br><br>"As he was crucified and tormented so we have been crucified and tormented all these years. They couldn't do anything to him. They can't do anything to us," she told the crowd, stoking fears among Serbs that the West is against them. <br><br>A noisy and impressive firework display followed, accompanied by the sound of firecrackers lit by the audience. <br><br>Two years ago, 39 police were among 45 people injured in a clash with supporters of the Milosevic-backed Socialist People's Party, who tried to storm the government a day before the inauguration of pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>MONTENEGRIN GOVERNMENT REINFORCES POLICE <br><br>Djukanovic, who was prime minister at the time, has gradually increased Montenegro's autonomy from Belgrade during his time in power and reinforced the police force against possible retaliation by Yugoslav troops based in Montenegro. <br><br>A police source said the Yugoslav soldiers had been given the day off to mark the Orthodox New Year. <br><br>One large group in the crowd came from the Lijeva Rijeva region, the home village of Milosevic's late father. <br><br>"The political situation isn't dangerous, it's the government that's dangerous," said Vucic Davidovic, 39, who said he lost his police job four years ago because he was a Serb and now lived on a pension of 75 German marks a month. <br><br>"We want to live together, they should be ashamed," he said, referring to the large police presence in the town. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, deputy head of the Socialist People's Party, whose followers are unhappy with Djukanovic's market reforms, said earlier this week there would be no political speeches and that nothing would be done to incite the crowd. <br><br>Lidija Ljumovic, 14, said she had come to the event with her 13-year-old friend for its religious significance and the pop music as well as to support the party. <br><br>"We support it because the governing party is splitting Yugoslavia," Ljumovic said. <br><br>All those asked at the rally said they did not expect trouble. But the police were clearly taking no chances. <br><br>"It's much more tense than last year," said the source, speaking as the crowd began pouring into the square. <br><br>"But we won't allow anything to happen like two years ago. If anyone tries anything, they'll be arrested," he said. <br><br>"For now it's all peaceful. Everything's under control." <br></font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947844619,49822,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Ruling Serbs reject opposition election call</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbia's ruling coalition Thursday rejected the latest calls from the Serbian opposition to hold early general elections. <br>Serbia's fragmented opposition united Monday on a plan to launch joint anti-government demonstrations if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ignored their demand for early elections at all levels by the end of April. <br><br>The opposition had said they would stage the first street protest in support of their demands in March. <br><br>A spokesman for Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) at a weekly news conference ridiculed the opposition demand. <br><br>"It is ridiculous to seek elections in an election year," Ivica Dacic said. "I do not understand how 16 parties, of which only one or two are in the parliament, can meet to demand elections." <br><br>Federal elections covering Yugoslavia's constituent republics of Serbia and Montenegro are due this year, as are municipal elections in Serbia. Elections for the Serbian republic parliament and president are due in 2001 and 2002 respectively. <br><br>The opposition argues that an early general poll would pave the way for democratic forces to legally take over from Milosevic, who they say is pushing the country further into isolation. <br><br>They say the vote would also clear obstacles to improving Serbia's ties with its small but increasingly independent partner Montenegro, which has said would not take part in any joint federal ballot organized by Milosevic and his allies. <br><br>At a separate news conference, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party and Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister, Vojislav Seselj, said only regular elections due this year would be held. <br><br>Seselj said his party wanted local elections to be held in the spring, while a vote for the Yugoslav parliament had to be held by Nov. 2. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947844588,96339,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Police out in force for Montenegro rally</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PODGORICA (Reuters) - Montenegrin police and anti-terrorist units were out in force in the republic's capital Thursday for a rally organized by supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. <br>Special police in flak-jackets and carrying arms guarded the parliament, government and other key buildings in the independence-minded republic, the only one to remain with Serbia in Milosevic's Yugoslav Federation. <br><br>They also deployed, with several armored personnel carriers and fire engines, near the central square where people gathered for the event, held to mark the Serbian Orthodox New Year's Eve. <br><br>Two years ago 39 police were among 45 people injured in a clash with supporters of the Milosevic-backed Socialist People's Party, who tried to storm the government a day before the inauguration of pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic. <br><br>Djukanovic, who was prime minister at the time, has gradually increased Montenegro's autonomy from Belgrade during his time in power and reinforced the police force against possible retaliation by Yugoslav troops based in Montenegro. <br><br>A police source said the Yugoslav soldiers had been given the day off to mark the Orthodox New Year. <br><br>The Socialist People's Party hoped to fill the central square for the gathering, which it says will be a combination of a religious celebration and a rock concert. <br><br>Predrag Bulatovic, deputy head of the party, whose followers are unhappy with Djukanovic's market reforms, said earlier this week there would be no political speeches and that nothing would be done to incite the crowd. <br><br>The police were clearly taking no chances. <br><br>"It's much more tense than last year," said the source. <br><br>"But we won't allow anything to happen like two years ago. If anyone tries anything, they'll be arrested," he said. <br><br>"For now it's all peaceful. Everything's under control." </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947844554,88985,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Tribunal sentences five Bosnian Croats in biggest conviction yet </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br><br>By Jerome Socolovsky, Associated Press Writer <br><br>U.N. judges today sentenced five Bosnian Croat militiamen to up to 25 years in prison in the biggest conviction yet at the international war crimes court on the Balkan conflict. <br><br>The verdicts followed 16 months of hearings and testimony from 158 witnesses in what prosecutors have depicted as one of the most horrific "ethnic cleansing" attacks in the 1992–95 Bosnian war. <br><br>The Bosnian Croats were convicted for taking part in a killing spree in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici, which left more than 100 Muslim men, women and children dead. Every Muslim home was burned to the ground. <br><br>"Indisputably, what happened on April 16, 1993, in Ahmici has gone down in history as comprising one of the most vicious illustrations of man's inhumanity to man," said presiding Judge Antonio Cassese. <br><br>"Today, the name of that small village must be added to the long list of previously unknown hamlets and towns that recall abhorrent deeds and make all of us shudder with horror and shame," he said. <br><br>The Italian judge read out a list of towns that included the infamous Nazi concentration camp, Dachau; Soweto, site of a massacre in apartheid South Africa; and My Lai, where U.S. soldiers slaughtered civilians during the Vietnam War. <br><br>However, Cassese conceded that his chamber had "not tried the major culprits ... those who ordered and planned, and those who carried out the very worst of the atrocities" at Ahmici. <br><br>The ruling sentenced Vladimir Santic, commander of a local police battalion, to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity for murdering and passing on orders from superiors to men under his command. Co–perpetrator Drago Josipovic was sentenced to 15 years. <br><br>Members of the Kupreskic family, brothers Zoran and Mirjan, and cousin Vlatko were given terms of up to 10 years for participating in the slaughter. <br><br>A sixth defendant, Dragan Papic, was set free because Cassese said the evidence could not prove his guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." <br><br>Unless the verdicts are appealed, the men will serve out their terms in one of several European countries that have offered to incarcerate Balkan war criminals. <br><br>On April 16, 1993, bands of armed Bosnian Croats who descended on the village and killed at least 103 Muslims, including 33 women and children. Entire families were gunned down, scores of houses were burned and two mosques were destroyed. People were burned alive. <br><br>When British peacekeepers came upon the village, all 172 Muslim houses had been destroyed, while not a single Croat home had been touched. <br><br>According to the indictment, Bosnian Croat militia conducted "a highly coordinated military operation" to empty the area around the valley of Muslim inhabitants. <br><br>The trial of Gen. Timohir Blaskic, commander of Croat forces in the area, finished last July, but no date has been announced for a verdict. <br><br>Although the Ahmici defendants were rank–and–file militiamen, some came from the town they were accused of attacking. That forced the court to grapple with one of the central mysteries of the Balkan conflict: How neighbors, whose children once played together, became sworn enemies almost overnight. <br><br>Since its establishment in 1993, the U.N. court has handed down only eight convictions. Seven are under appeal. Only one convict has served out his term, in Norway. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947763647,11395,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Milosevic's rivals try to bury feuds </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Guardian<br>Jackie Rowlands in Belgrade <br><br>The Serbian opposition will be celebrating Orthodox new year tonight in a greater state of harmony than at any stage since the end of the Nato bombing campaign. <br>Rival opposition parties are encouraging their supporters to come together at an open-air New Year's Eve party organised by the students' resistance movement in Republic Square in Belgrade, the scene of ultimately doomed protests last year against the rule of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>The hitherto feuding opposition is congratulating itself on the signing of a "historic agreement" earlier this week in which 15 political parties adopted a joint strategy aimed at securing early presidential, parliamentary and local elections in Serbia. <br><br>At their festivities the students are to name their men and women of 1999, and more than a few opposition leaders will doubtless be hoping to find their names on the list. <br><br>"We, the leaders of the democratic opposition, decided to once again demand from Milosevic and both Yugoslav and Serbian parliaments to agree to call early elections by the end of April." said a spokesman for the controversial and charismatic opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic. <br><br>The demand for elections was accompanied by a threat of renewed anti-government protests starting in March. <br><br>The action plan was the initiative of Mr Draskovic, who is trying to assume the role of overall leader of the Serbian opposition. He appears to believe that his moment has come after the failure of his rival, Zoran Djindjic, to galvanise public support during a countrywide protest campaign last summer. <br><br>The decision by all the main opposition parties to support the strategy indicates a new pragmatism and a tacit admission that opposition disunity has alienated the people of Serbia. <br><br>Beyond the demand for elections, Mr Draskovic's blueprint outlines a strategy for rehabilitating Serbia internationally. It contains proposals for the lifting of sanctions against Belgrade once the authorities agree to elections and for the readmission of Serbia into the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. <br><br>To avoid accusations of selling out to the west, the opposition also calls for Serbian troops to be allowed to return to Kosovo. <br><br>Mr Draskovic is adopting a softly softly approach to political change rather than the top-to-bottom shake-out advocated by some of his younger opposition rivals. Notably absent from his blueprint is the demand for the immediate removal of President Milosevic. <br><br>Mr Draskovic is meanwhile courting disaffected members of Mr Milosevic's ruling Socialist party of Serbia, who are alarmed at the growing influenc</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947763331,81838,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Yugoslav: NATO Bombs Killed 2,000</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia killed some 2,000 people, half of whom were children, a top Yugoslav army general said Wednesday.<br><br>NATO carried out its 78-day bombing campaign last year in an effort to stop government troops' crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo.<br><br>The independent Beta news agency quoted Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic as saying that ``NATO did not accomplish any of its declared goals but it killed 2,000 innocent victims, 50 percent of whom were children.''<br><br>NATO has not confirmed a number of people killed by its airstrikes in Yugoslavia. Serbian officials have said before that more than 300 people died, but that number was unconfirmed as well.<br><br>Lazarevic did not give a breakdown of the death toll between civilians and the Yugoslav military, nor say on what his estimate was based. Earlier statements by top officials of Yugoslavia, the federation of Serbia and Montenegro, had mentioned some 500 casualties among the armed forces.<br><br>Lazarevic was one of the top commanders in Kosovo during the conflict.<br><br>The bombardment ended when the government troops agreed to pull out from the province, which opened way for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, which is now administered by the United Nations.<br><br>Meanwhile, police arrested and questioned a top opposition official for several hours Wednesday, the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement said. Miladin Kovacevic, a top adviser to opposition party leader Vuk Draskovic, was confronted by the police in a Belgrade street and taken into custody, a statement from the opposition party said. He was released later in the day.<br><br>Serbian Renewal Movement and other opposition parties agreed this week on a new, joint effort to try oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Kovacevic was the official who announced the decision Monday. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947763292,53829,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Greece and Italy call for end of Serbian sanctions</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">ATHENS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Greece and Italy on Tuesday called for early democratic elections in Serbia and an eventual lifting of the embargo that has been imposed on their Balkan neighbour.<br><br>Prime Minister Costas Simitis and his Italian counterpart Massimo D'Alema, who is on a two-day official visit to Greece, urged the European Union and the United States to support efforts for Serbian democracy.<br><br>The two leaders also backed Serb opposition calls for early elections with international guarantees for their transparency and an eventual lifting of the embargo.<br><br>``Greece has always supported the view that the embargo cannot solve the problems. If there is not economic development in the region, there will not be calm in the Balkans,'' Simitis told reporters after a one-hour meeting with D'Alema.<br><br>``The point is not to help one side or the other. We must pursue democracy,'' Simitis added.<br><br>D'Alema also called for the lifting of sanctions against ordinary Serbs, especially in the fields of air transportation and the supply of natural gas. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947763236,6497,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro to reshuffle government</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PODGORICA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Montenegro will reshuffle its government later this month to replace foreign minister Branko Perovic, who resigned last month over alleged involvement in smuggling and criminal association with the Italian mafia. <br>Local media said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic had called an extraordinary session of parliament for January 26 to outline the reshuffle, which according to the Montenegrin constitution must be approved by the deputies. <br><br>Part of the ruling coalition of the pro-Western republic, the only one left with Serbia in the internationally isolated Yugoslav Federation led by Slobodan Milosevic, is also pressing for other ministerial changes, the Vijesti daily said. <br><br>Vijesti said there was so far only one obvious candidate to replace Perovic, who told parliament last month he would step down, after an Italian judge ordered him and others to stand trial on smuggling and criminal association charges. <br><br>"In diplomatic ranks only the name of Branko Lukovac, Montenegro's envoy to Slovenia, is mentioned as a possible replacement for Perovic," it said. <br><br>Western diplomatic sources have said Perovic's resignation was a damage limitation move to appease European Union backers of Montenegro's government and ease pressure from its Milosevic-backed opponents. <br><br>The National Party and the Social Democratic Party, junior partners in the tripartite ruling coalition, are pressing for the replacement of Minister of Religious Affairs Slobodan Tomovic, Vijesti said. <br><br>The parties say Tomovic is too close to the Serbian Orthodox Church and that this is not fair on the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which the Serbian Church does not recognise. <br><br>Last week police prevented supporters of the Montenegrin Church holding a ceremony in a place where adherents of the Serbian Church had already gathered, saying they feared a clash. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947763188,87084,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>If Serbia, then Chechnya </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">RUSSIA'S military offensive in Chechnya is an unintended result of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia. <br><br>There are many similarities between the two wars, both in concept and in execution. Russia has learned from our example. <br><br># NATO bombed Serbia into submission. Russia hopes to bomb Chechnya into submission. <br><br># NATO claimed that it did not target Serbian civilians. Russia claims that it does not target Chechen civilians. A Russian official complains, "When you (Americans) bombed civilians in Kosovo, you called it collateral damage. When we do it, you call it a violation of human rights." <br><br># NATO's bombardment caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee from Kosovo. Russian bombs drive columns of refugees out of Chechnya. <br><br># NATO claimed that the war was necessary to defeat Serb terrorists, thugs and murderers. Russia claims it must, similarly, rout Chechen terrorists, thugs and murderers. <br><br># NATO bombed because its credibility was in jeopardy. Russia bombs, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, because, "We have capitulated everywhere. Our country cannot abandon the right to defend itself, and defense means completing this operation." The new acting president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, echoed these sentiments, saying, "We will not tolerate any humiliation to the national pride of Russians or any threat to the integrity of the country." <br><br># NATO avoided a ground war, fearing heavy allied casualties. Threatening to "drop the bridges and turn out the lights" if Belgrade did not surrender, the West defeated Yugoslavia through massive aerial bombardment. <br><br>Russia lost the first war in Chechnya in 1994-96 because it got bogged down in ground combat. This time Moscow, seeking to minimize its losses, replicates NATO's tactics. Recently, though, winter has set in and poor visibility has made bombing difficult. Russian casualties have begun to mount. <br><br>Last spring, Russian entreaties against NATO's massive application of force in Serbia were ignored. This winter, Western condemnations of Russia's "indiscriminate bombing" are disregarded in Moscow. <br><br>At a summit in Istanbul in mid-November, President Clinton warned his "good friend" Yeltsin that if attacks on civilians continued, "the world would not stand idly by." <br><br>Yeltsin responded that Clinton could no longer claim the moral high ground. Wasn't the attack on Serbia a war of "disproportionate consequence?" <br><br>Had not the United States used inflated estimates of hundreds of thousands of murdered Kosovars as a pretext to interfere in a sovereign nation's internal affairs? <br><br>Last month, Clinton again warned that the offensive must stop. Yeltsin reminded Washington "that Russia has a full arsenal of nuclear weapons." <br><br>How did we get to this war of words? What happened to glasnost and perestroika? <br><br>A decade ago, the Russians drove the Communists out of power with the expectation that the Free World would embrace them as allies. It never happened. <br><br>At the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West promised that it would not expand eastward. Since then, NATO, with the inclusion of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, has moved up to the borders of the former Soviet Union. It threatens to extend the alliance still further. <br><br>The Clinton administration, reversing long-standing arms control policy, seems determined to press ahead with an antimissile defense that would abrogate the ABM treaty of 1972. <br><br>The ill-conceived, poorly monitored infusion of billions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund into Russia has created a kleptocracy in which the shrewd and corrupt strip the country of its assets and drive average, law-abiding citizens into poverty. While criminals with foreign bank accounts live in regal splendor, Russian pensioners go hungry. <br><br>And to add insult to injury, at the very conference in which the West demanded a withdrawal from Chechnya, a treaty designed to squeeze Russia out of petroleum profits was signed. With Clinton as smiling witness, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey agreed to build a pipeline that, intentionally by-passing Russia, would send Caspian Sea oil directly into Western markets. <br><br>Our idle threats over Chechnya are counterproductive. If we truly want Moscow to stop targeting civilians, we should set the example. <br><br><br>Examiner contributor Alex A. Vardamis, former director for European studies at the Army War College, is a retired colonel who served as military attache in Greece. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947500959,37350,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Belgrade Cool; Foes Pleased by Croatian Election</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Philippa Fletcher<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - The Yugoslav government responded coolly to the historic defeat of Croatia's ruling party in a parliamentary election, while an opposition party said it showed democratic forces were on the ascendancy.<br><br>``It's an expected defeat, it's nothing new,'' Goran Matic, information secretary of the Yugoslav Federation now made up of just Serbia and Montenegro, told Reuters after late President Franjo Tudjman's HDZ conceded defeat to its center-left foes.<br><br>A spokesman for the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Draskovic, welcomed the victory of the main Croatian opposition bloc uniting Social Democrats with Social Liberals over the HDZ, which has ruled Croatia since 1990.<br><br>``We congratulate the opposition on its victory in Croatia,'' Ivan Kovacevic said at the party's weekly news conference.<br><br>``The Croatian experience points the way to (Serbian) democratic forces if they really want to win,'' he said, blaming rivals for divisions which have hamstrung opposition efforts to end Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's decade-long rule.<br><br>Matic said he was not worried by the vote for change.<br><br>``Why should it concern us? Those are Croatian elections,'' he said.<br><br>Ivica Racan, head of the victorious Croatian bloc, pledged to win back support from Western governments that shunned the ex-Yugoslav republic in protest at Tudjman's autocratic rule. The veteran leader died last month and presidential elections are scheduled for January 24.<br><br>Racan also pledged to tackle hardship by cutting the budget and offering tax breaks to investors.<br><br>Like today's Yugoslavia, Croatia was ostracized by the West over its role in the 1992-5 Bosnian conflict, which followed close on the heels of the war between Serbs and Croats which accompanied Croatia's moves to independence in 1991.<br><br>Since last year's conflict with NATO over Serbia's Kosovo province, the Belgrade government has been isolated further by the West, which has said Milosevic was at the heart of all recent Balkans conflicts and continues to be a threat to peace.<br><br>Matic, whose government insists it can stave off economic crisis without the help of the West who it says only wants to destroy and then occupy Yugoslavia piece by piece, said Croatia's new leaders had a lot to prove.<br><br>``Each political party makes promises. Let's see how they fulfil them.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947500928,91155,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Montenegro May Phase Out Dinar</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">PODGORICA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Montenegro may phase out the Yugoslav federation's official currency, the dinar, by the end of the month, a newspaper reported Wednesday.<br><br>Dimitrije Vesovic, who supervises the republic's money supply, was quoted by the newspaper, Pobjeda, as saying that the introduction of the German mark as a parallel currency in November has been so successful that there has been a sharp decrease in the supply of the dinar.<br><br>Dropping the circulation of the dinar would further distance Montenegro from Serbia, its much larger partner in Yugoslavia. The leaders of both republics have been at odds for months.<br><br>The monetary changes began as result of political differences between Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic and the reformist, pro-Western leadership of Montenegro. </font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947500899,59945,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Belgrade Plays 'Good Cop' 'Bad Cop' on Montenegro</center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">By Daniel Bukumirovic<br><br>BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojslav Seselj said Thursday Belgrade should ``intervene using all available means'' if Montenegro decided to secede.<br><br>Seselj was commenting on a New Year's message by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which challenged the pro-Western leadership of Montenegro, the junior partner to Serbia in the two-member federation, to call a referendum on independence.<br><br>Montenegrin officials, who had themselves threatened such a referendum if Milosevic refuses to reform Yugoslavia to free them from his policies, said the challenge was a trick and that Seselj's statements could be closer to Belgrade's real view.<br><br>``Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslav president has a right to his opinion. He said Montenegrin citizens could decide their destiny for themselves. It is an old democratic principle, and we don't have anything against it,'' said Seselj, who represents the radical wing of a ruling coalition controlled by Milosevic.<br><br>``But the Yugoslav constitution does not foresee the possibility of secession of a federal unit, and the federal state has in such cases to intervene using all available means.''<br><br>The Montenegrin government, anticipating a radical statement from Seselj, had already said that Milosevic would have to distance himself from the minister to prove his rational- sounding words were genuine.<br><br>Western officials, mindful of bloody attempts to carve out Serb states in other ex-Yugoslav republics which split away, have advised Montenegro, which has already gone its own way on the economic front, not to try for full independence.<br><br>``The best solution for Montenegro is that which suits Montenegro,'' Milosevic said in his New Year address, which came at a time of heightened tensions with the coastal republic.<br><br>``If the Montenegrin people think life outside Yugoslavia would be better for them, they have a right to chose such a life, and if, on the other hand, they think life in Yugoslavia is the optimum choice for them they have to stick to it.''<br><br>Some analysts said the address was a way for Milosevic to make clear he rejected reform and expected Montenegro to stop unilateral moves toward autonomy, while at the same time sounding reasonable.<br><br>``Milosevic's statement should be treated with caution, as if it was a threat,'' Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Novak Kilibarda told Reuters Wednesday, recalling that Milosevic never waved the flag of war throughout a decade of conflicts.<br><br>``If the Yugoslav president says he disagrees with Seselj, then we may trust him,'' he said.</font><br></p> <a name="newsitem947500865,95195,"></a> <p><strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Navy"><center>Draskovic accused of spying for France </center></font><br></strong><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000">The Independent<br><br>By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade <br><br>The Yugoslav government has accused opposition leader Vuk Draskovic of being a "French spy" and of wanting civil war, ahead of a strategy meeting for opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic. <br><br>Goran Matic, the Yugoslav Information Minister, claimed Mr Draskovic was a puppet of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. <br><br>"We should not be surprised if the ... meeting brings an initiative to offer Nato a partnership. This would pardon the commanders and executors of the crimes committed during the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," he said. <br><br>With leadership provided by the Mr Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), Serbia's 16 major opposition parties and groups, including the Alliance for Change, will meet to discuss how they can force Mr Milosevic to call early elections. <br><br>SPO officials do not exclude the possibility of calling for joint mass protests, a strategy the party did not support when the Alliance started anti-Milosevic rallies last year. A spokesman for SPO, Ivan Kovacevic, said: "The time has come now for all forms of battle against the regime." <br><br>Previously, SPO had tried to press for the early elections through parliamentary procedure but found its efforts blocked by the ruling "red-black coalition" of Milosevic's Socialists, his wife's JUL and the Radicals of Vojislav Seselj. <br><br>Dragor Hiber of the Alliance said that it would be enough if all the opposition parties agreed on simple things, such as a non-aggression pact between them and a refusal to co-operate with the ruling coalition in case opposition forces win the elections. </font><br></p> |
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