ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Panic Offering Hope to Yugoslavia : The Costa Mesa businessman faces a daunting task of bringing peace to Yugoslavia. Can he do it? His countrymen think so. He may be their best and only hope.

It was a pleasant surprise to learn during my stay in Costa Mesa last fall, as part of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ International Journalism Exchange Program, that the city was the seat of ICN Pharmaceutical Inc., mother company of Belgrade-based ICN Galenika. It was natural, therefore, to get in touch with some of the people working there to do a story about a most significant--and successful--U.S.-Yugoslav joint-venture.

As primarily a political journalist, I called upon Ted Olic, the company’s international vice president and a former colleague of mine. I didn’t try to reach the head of the company, Milan Panic, because I was not too interested in chatting with some self-made millionaire of Yugoslav origin, who could, I presumed, talk only about business and money.

You can imagine my astonishment--and anger because of my lousy intuition--when I, 10 months and who knows how many political light years later, realized that that wealthy American was going to become the first prime minister of new Yugoslavia.

Of course, I was not the only astonished and confused person in the Balkans powder keg; an area which was once again, from inside and out, pushed into the chaos of secession and war, antagonism and hate. In an age made for real and false prophets, the appearance of Milan Panic was met with the mixture of quite opposite feelings and reactions.

Some cynical people considered the whole idea just a good joke (“try to imagine an American millionaire as the head of government in the last Bolshevik regime in Europe”). Others claimed that he was “hired to save the substance of the Milosevic regime” and that “he shall be the slave of (Milosevic’s) policies.”

Some were skeptical. He who has their (Serbian government) support, they said, cannot be different from them. They shall simply eat him alive, or throw him out and away if he becomes too annoying.

To many people, he was not serious enough. Too American, too loud, too cowboy-like. His Serbian was too English, said the purists. And his English was too Serbian, added the hair-splitters. He has come here, others explained, just for the sake of his personal ego, and for the opportunity one day to be able to show his grandchildren the albums with photos of their grandfather and world big shots (“Look, honey, here’s your granddad with Jim Baker! And on this one with French President Mitterrand!”).

His kind of people, businessmen and managers, were less reluctant and more enthusiastic. They saw Panic as a man “who knows his business and who means business.” To them he was more than welcomed here because “the only measure that counts in business is the one of success in it.”

Deliberate political observers do not overlook Panic’s admirable persistence and encouraging optimism. “He is giving us back the faith in some lost good things, and we should be grateful to him for his words of peace and against the hate,” wrote one prominent journalist. “There is no prime minister in the modern history of this country who was faced with so many hard challenges,” warned a former top diplomat, adding that “we would like to believe that he is not a person who accepts lightly these hard duties.”

Indeed, this strange, rich man from California was accepted by many so-called ordinary people with a “we-would-like-to-believe” attitude. Although for the majority of more than 10 million Yugoslavs, Panic virtually came out of nowhere (he himself said once, jokingly, that “he fell from heaven”). He was greeted by many as a savior from the current political and economic chaos, a sort of messiah who can make miracles. Or, more simply, as an unknown--but secretly expected and wished-for--rich uncle from America.

This, of course, tells more about the time and the people in question than about Mr. Panic. Still, despite his political inexperience, he has shown that he is a quick and able learner.

Immediately after his arrival and election, he said that he would give up his salary as prime minister (“I came back to my country to help, not to earn money”). Even though that sounded a bit populistic, in a country where the average salary currently is less than 40 U.S. dollars monthly, these words and other deeds obviously have taken some ground.

In recent polls, as many as 73% of the participants believed that Panic is going to fulfill his promises. That seems to be one thing he did bring to Yugoslavia from Costa Mesa; the motto at the entrance to his ICN Pharmaceutical palace in Costa Mesa reads: “Those who have the hope, have everything.”