Massacre Fuels Opposition Effort

The massacre of 14 farmers in Kosovo gave new ammunition to a prominent opposition leader Saturday in his efforts to gain support among the Serbian people and drive Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from power.

At a rally that drew about 25,000 protesters in this southern Serbian city, opposition leader Vuk Draskovic blamed both Milosevic’s failed policies and NATO-led peacekeeping forces for what he called genocide against the declining Serbian minority in Kosovo, where the 14 Serbs were slain Friday night.

By going to war against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Yugoslavia has lost control of its border with Macedonia and Albania, and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population can pursue its dream of a “greater Albania,” charged Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement.

“Trust me, troops of the legitimate Albanian army are coming across the Albanian-Yugoslav border,” Draskovic shouted to a boisterous crowd of Serbs. “They’re setting our monasteries and churches on fire. They’re burning our roots. They’re raping Serbs, kidnapping and killing Serbs, and everybody keeps silent about that.”

While Kosovo is a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic, and is considered by Serbs to be their cultural heartland, its population is predominantly ethnic Albanian. Since NATO-led peacekeepers took control of Kosovo last month and promised to protect all ethnic groups, an estimated 150,000 Serbs have left the province, fearing reprisal attacks by returning refugees.

Draskovic called the Serbian exodus “ethnic cleansing under the flag of the United Nations.”

But Milosevic can’t do anything to defend Serbs, Draskovic charged, because foreign governments won’t listen to him now that the Yugoslav leader and four top lieutenants have been indicted by an international tribunal on war crimes charges.

In Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, Milosevic on Saturday also cited the slayings in Kosovo while demanding that Yugoslav troops and police be allowed back into Kosovo to protect Serbs.

Under the military agreement last month between NATO and Yugoslavia that ended 11 weeks of NATO bombing, all Yugoslav forces withdrew from the province. The agreement calls for eventually allowing a small number of Yugoslav soldiers and police to return, but that part of the accord has yet to be implemented.

In his speech Saturday, Draskovic repeated his demand that Milosevic and his government resign and be replaced by a temporary government of experts until voters can elect new rulers.

But the opposition against Milosevic is still weak and fractured, and Draskovic’s credibility suffered after he suggested at a July 17 rally that Milosevic should receive immunity from prosecution for war crimes charges if he resigns.

Milosevic’s former military chief of staff, Momcilo Perisic, recently told a Serbian interviewer that he might form his own political party, which would further split the opposition.

Perisic, whom Milosevic fired in November, was a loyal commander during conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this decade and in Kosovo last year, but he fell from grace by trying to convince Milosevic that Yugoslavia shouldn’t go to war against NATO.

Perisic accused Milosevic of replacing professional commanders with political allies, destroying the Yugoslav military’s tradition of staying out of politics.

Milosevic’s government “wanted the Yugoslav army to be merely a blind executioner of sometimes imprudent and fatal decisions,” the former general said.

*

Reuters in Belgrade contributed to this report.