Christopher Urges Serbian Leader to Hold Talks With the Opposition

Secretary of State Warren Christopher escalated U.S. pressure on Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on Monday, urging him to talk with opposition leaders, recognize freedom of assembly, respect opposition victories in recent municipal elections and unfetter the press.

Although he said Milosevic demonstrated at the Dayton, Ohio, peace conference last year that he was capable of abrupt changes of course, Christopher said, “Milosevic’s position at the present time is self-defeating.”

Another senior Clinton administration official was blunter: “The tendencies that he is showing are not much in his favor. Milosevic is digging himself in [to an inflexible position], which is a very bad sign for him and his country. . . . If he doesn’t clean up his act, he is and will be in deep trouble.”

Christopher, in Brussels to attend a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers today, told a news conference that Washington has made its views crystal-clear to Milosevic, though no U.S. official above the rank of embassy charge d’affaires has spoken with the Serbian leader since the current round of demonstrations began in Serbia.

“The United States has left no doubt, and I leave no doubt, about U.S. support for democratic change in Serbia,” Christopher said. “We urge Milosevic to open dialogue with the opposition, recognize freedom of assembly, respect the results of the election and stop interfering with the press.”

He predicted that the NATO foreign ministers will issue a call for democracy in Serbia during their winter meeting here.

Christopher repeated that the United States reserves the right to seek a reimposition of U.N.-mandated economic sanctions against Serbia, which with Montenegro constitutes the rump Yugoslavia, though he conceded that Russia could veto such a move in the Security Council.

He declined to spell out other steps under consideration by the United States, but he insisted that Washington has ways to show its displeasure with Milosevic.

John Kornblum, an assistant secretary of state and the administration’s point person on the Balkans, last met with Milosevic a month ago, before the anti-regime demonstrations began in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, and other Serbian cities.

But a senior U.S. official said the absence of high-level meetings is intended to underline the message Washington is trying to send.

“We don’t want to appear to be negotiating with Milosevic about his [un]democratic behavior,” the official said.

The official added that Washington also has warned Croatian President Franjo Tudjman that his government must move toward democracy. “We aren’t satisfied with the present situation in Croatia,” he said.

In Belgrade on Monday, tens of thousands of Serbians demonstrating against alleged election fraud showed no sign of relenting in their challenge to Milosevic over the reversal of opposition victories in municipal elections Nov. 17. Protesters vented their feelings with a chorus of whistles outside police headquarters.

Students expressed outrage at reports of the police torture of Dejan Bulatovic, 21, a student from the northwestern town of Sid who was arrested Friday for carrying an effigy of Milosevic in prison garb. His mother said her son’s nose was broken, that he was forced to lie naked on the concrete floor of a prison cell with an open window and that, during the beating, a gun barrel was forced into his mouth.

Opposition leaders, meanwhile, said they were surprised at a move by the city’s electoral commission to appeal a Serbian Supreme Court ruling Saturday that turned aside its legal challenge to Milosevic. They said the action might mean that Milosevic, who is facing Western demands to honor democratic methods, could be pressed into holding a complete rerun of the controversial local elections.

Christopher, who said he is probably making his last foreign trip during a four-year span that made him the United States’ most widely traveled secretary of state, told reporters in Brussels that the NATO foreign ministers are expected to set a date for an alliance summit meeting that will consider the applications for membership of Central and Eastern European nations.