Profile : ‘Arkan’ a Suave Serbian Rogue : Jail-breaking Parliament candidate is a wanted fugitive and accused war criminal with a ‘trust me’ smile.

His diamond-studded Rolex, impeccable suits and a winning, “trust me” smile convey a suave and successful image that Westerners might mistakenly interpret as the reason Serbian voters are drawn to parliamentary candidate Zeljko Raznjatovic.

But for most Serbs who want to reelect the notorious “Arkan” and his Party of Serbian Unity in Dec. 19 elections, it is more his reputation as a jail-breaking gangster and ruthless warlord that wins them over.

Convicted of bank robbery in Sweden and wanted by Interpol for questioning in connection with a spree of other armed heists and assaults across Western Europe, the baby-faced 42-year-old is the embodiment of every nationalist myth the mesmerized Serbian people hold dear.

As leader of the most feared Serbian paramilitary force, his name strikes terror in the hearts of people in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where his heavily armed gang has been photographed in the act of “ethnic cleansing,” adding its share of victims to the Balkan war’s estimated 250,000 dead and 2 million homeless.

He has amassed phenomenal wealth over the last two years by turning U.N. sanctions to his own advantage, raking in millions in hard currency through a massive gas-smuggling and money-laundering operation.

Although his financial success has come at the expense of those whose votes he now solicits, they tend to admire a rogue from their own ranks who has made a mockery of the sanctions Serbs believe have been unfairly imposed against them.

Most importantly, at a time when Serbia has fallen into global disrepute for instigating the Balkans war, Arkan telegraphs to his ostracized countrymen that he remains proud to be a nationalist patriot.

He responds to questions about his status as a wanted fugitive and accused war criminal with a profoundly Serbian display of inat-- a mixture of defiance, hubris and spite that has no equivalent in the English language.

“I will go to a war crimes tribunal when Americans are tried for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Cambodia, Panama!” he snaps when asked about U.S. accusations that he has committed atrocities in pursuit of Greater Serbia.

While outside observers are baffled by the seeming lack of public concern here that such a controversial figure may soon be the second most powerful politician in rump Yugoslavia--after Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic--Arkan’s transformation from paramilitary warlord to political powerbroker raises few eyebrows among the 10 million residents of Serbia and Montenegro.

Extraordinary times, many believe, justify extraordinary choices.

Two years ago, Arkan led his Serbian Volunteer Guard--also known as the Serbian Tigers--in the rout of Croats from eastern Croatia.

U.N. troops who deployed to the region last year have gingerly maneuvered around Arkan’s stronghold, bowing to his superior firepower and his forces’ disdain for the foreign presence. The “blue helmets” even vacated their original Sector East headquarters when Arkan demanded the building to expand his own base.

In one of the more glaring indignities of a U.N. mission renowned for humiliations, peacekeepers stationed at the vanquished village of Erdut have to submit to periodic document checks by the “Arkanovci” and wait at rebel roadblocks while the paramilitaries move in contraband fuel and weapons.

Arkan’s presence in Parliament, along with that of other accused war criminals, has further discredited the Belgrade regime with Western democracies.

But he serves a number of domestic political needs.

Though ostensibly a Milosevic rival, Arkan has joined in the regime’s efforts to lay responsibility for the devastated Serbian economy on the outside world, which imposed sanctions. He was one of the first politicians to call the punitive measures “genocide,” a label now routinely affixed to any mention of the sanctions.

Moral support from purported political competitors has helped persuade Serbs that they are the victims of an international conspiracy--not their rulers’ ineptitude.

Imports of food and medicine are not subject to the U.N. embargo, but Serbian officials have nevertheless blamed every shortage and hardship afflicting their country on the sanctions rather than on the government policies that invited global condemnation and helped bankrupt the country.

Western diplomats and some Serbian analysts see Arkan’s candidacy in next week’s elections as a Milosevic maneuver to help cement his power in much the same way he did a year ago.

When the last two republics remaining in Yugoslavia went to the polls last Dec. 20, Milosevic gained effective control of both the Serbian and federal parliaments by backing another ultranationalist warlord, Vojislav Seselj.

Seselj and his Serbian Radical Party provided a rallying point for ardent nationalists who were opposed to the conciliatory policies of then-federal Prime Minister Milan Panic, but also reluctant to endorse the renamed Communists in Milosevic’s Serbian Socialist Party.

An analyst for one independent Belgrade weekly dubbed Seselj “Milosevic’s remote-controlled scarecrow,” dispatched to commit the atrocities and utter the outrages the leadership wanted while keeping the president’s hands clean.

But Seselj in recent months has turned on his political creator, openly attacking Milosevic by calling for a no-confidence vote in the Socialist-led government and seeking alliances with other renegade nationalist factions.

That prompted Milosevic to order the Serbian Parliament disbanded and new elections held, only a year after the vote that gave Seselj his own claim to power.

Sunday’s balloting will be the fourth for the federal and republic parliaments in three years, all planned by Milosevic to show popular support for his internationally condemned policies.

Because Milosevic controls influential Serbian TV, he has succeeded in keeping Seselj and the Radicals out of the limelight this time--a virtual news blackout on the man Milosevic last year described as his “favorite opposition politician.”

By contrast, Arkan’s campaign has been given television coverage second only to the attention paid to Milosevic and his Socialists.

His face beams from posters swaying from every lamp post and affixed to every well-positioned billboard or building facade in this Serbian and federal capital.

Although even rural Serbs know better, Arkan is portrayed for the benefit of his campaign persona as an astute businessman who made his fortune selling ice cream and pastries at his Belgrade cafe.

The son of a former Yugoslav air force colonel, Arkan worked for the secret police during the Communist era. Then-reliable Serbian media reported in the late 1980s that Arkan had been an undercover assassin dispatched to liquidate emigre enemies of the state.

His ties to the old power structure, it is said, allowed him to escape a Swedish jail under cover of a shootout and to be included in a 1990 exchange of nationalist prisoners between Belgrade and Zagreb.

About a year ago, Arkan traded his camouflage jumpsuit and black beret for a Burberry trench coat and life on the hustings.

He entered the political scene by leading a five-candidate slate to victory last December as representatives of the restive province of Kosovo. (Ethnic Albanians, who make up more than 90% of Kosovo’s 2 million population, boycott all Belgrade-administered elections to protest the Serbian police state imposed on them, effectively ceding all political power to whatever Serbian faction wages a campaign.)

His high-profile drive this year to replace Seselj and the Radicals as the No. 2 political force is expected to garner Arkan as many as 40 posts in the 250-seat Serbian Parliament--enough to maintain the illusion of a multi-party legislature while leaving Milosevic with an insurmountable majority.

“I don’t think Milosevic will make the same mistake twice,” of allowing his hand-picked parliamentary allies to gain enough power to challenge his Socialists, said a Western diplomat. “Arkan will be much more easy to control than Seselj. He’s not as smart and he’s more vulnerable because he is already wanted in several countries. All Milosevic would have to do if he (Arkan) got out of line would be to hand him over to Interpol.”

BIOGRAPHY

Name: Zeljko Raznjatovic, but known as Arkan

Age: 42

Personal: High school education. Commander of the paramilitary Serbian Volunteer Guard. Member of recently dissolved Serbian parliament. Owner of ice cream and pastry shop. President of Red Star-Belgrade soccer fan club that has served as a recruiting service for fighters. Married. Four children

Quote: (in 1991 interview in vanquished Vukovar) “The war will stop when we reach Zagreb. I will open a branch of my ice cream parlor on Ban Jelacic Square.”