Milosevic Foe Stays Put for Now

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has persuaded his most hawkish, ultranationalist critic to stay in the government at least until October, apparently delaying a political crisis over the country’s defeat in Kosovo.

Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj’s about-face decision not to quit the ruling coalition in Yugoslavia’s largest republic, Serbia, spares Milosevic of a choice between two options with unpredictable consequences: bringing moderates into the Serbian government or calling early elections in the republic.

Either change in the republic’s government could shake Milosevic’s rule of the Yugoslav federation.

With the last of 40,000 Yugoslav troops and police due to leave Kosovo by midnight Sunday, politicians here say it appears that Milosevic will be able, with help from the police and state-owned media, to keep control of his shattered, disillusioned country in the coming months, despite pressure from the West and at home to step down.

Yugoslavia’s 11-week war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which at first drew Serbs behind the president, is now widely viewed here as a disaster for the country. Many feel Milosevic has lost Kosovo, a province of Serbia, to its ethnic Albanian majority.

While many analysts doubt he can recover from this defeat, few are willing to predict that his 12-year-long dominance of Yugoslavia and Serbia will end soon. The constitution bars him from a new presidential term starting in 2001, but his domestic foes are weak and he is a master at changing the rules.

Since Milosevic first bowed to NATO’s demands two weeks ago, the democratic opposition and Serbia’s Orthodox Church have called for his resignation. Democratic leaders are demanding that he go to Kosovo to demonstrate his claim that Belgrade still has sovereignty there, or to the Netherlands to defend himself against war crimes charges brought last month by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

But Milosevic is said to be more worried about possible unrest by ultranationalists who wanted to keep fighting for Kosovo. Their most powerful leader is Seselj, who commanded a Serbian militia in the Croatian and Bosnian wars of the early 1990s and is now a deputy prime minister in the Serbian government.

Accusing Milosevic of “surrendering Kosovo without a fight,” Seselj vowed two weeks ago to quit the government as soon as NATO-led peacekeeping forces set foot in the province, which they did last Saturday.

Without Seselj’s Radicals, Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia-led coalition would not have a majority in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament and would face two options. They could be forced to call elections in Serbia. This would threaten Milosevic’s hold on the Yugoslav federal government because the upper house of the federal parliament is chosen by the Serbian republic leadership.

The other option would be to bring the largest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, into a reshuffled Serbian Cabinet. But the party’s leader, Vuk Draskovic, is demanding “fundamental democratic reforms” that would reduce Milosevic’s power and leave him a largely ceremonial head of state.

Seselj reversed his decision Thursday after Serbian President Milan Milutinovic issued a decree ordering all officials to stay in their posts. Seselj agreed not to call parliament back into session--it is recessed until October--to challenge the decision.

Politicians here believe that the decree is a cover for some kind of deal between Milosevic and Seselj, giving the Radical leader more power within the government without obliging him to endorse the peace accord.

“Seselj was about to start an election campaign against Milosevic and this capitulation in Kosovo,” said Dusan Mihajlovic, president of the New Democracy Party and a former Cabinet minister. “This would have been extremely dangerous for Milosevic.”

Somehow, he added, the president persuaded Seselj “to be quiet and go back to his office.”

The decision disappointed moderate members of Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia and its coalition partner, the Yugoslav United Left Party. They hoped that a reshuffled government with reform-minded politicians serving under Milosevic could have courted Western aid and investment to help repair Yugoslavia’s extensive war damage.

Milosevic appears to have calculated that such a change in government wasn’t worth the risk. President Clinton and European leaders have vowed to give Serbia no reconstruction aid--with the exception of rebuilding in Kosovo--as long as he remains in office.

Instead, Milosevic has opted to create the illusion of a Yugoslavia on the mend. At two rare, highly publicized rallies this week, the normally reclusive leader proclaimed the start of a “successful and quick process of renewal” aided by “the restoration of ties with the entire world.”

His promise at a rally in Novi Sad to rebuild one of that city’s three bomb-damaged bridges over the Danube River within 40 days has been replayed frequently on state TV, which reports that Moscow’s city government is paying for another span.

State TV has not reported the West’s refusal to aid the reconstruction of Yugoslavia. Nor has it mentioned the church’s demand that Milosevic resign or shown images of the despairing faces of Serbian civilians retreating in fear from Kosovo behind the army and police forces.

“Anger over this war is building, but people are scared; they would rather someone else do the job of getting rid of Milosevic--whether it’s NATO, the United States, a lone assassin or an act of God,” said Bratislav Grubacic, a political analyst who edits Belgrade’s VIP Daily News Report. “They know that any effort to remove him at this point is likely to be bloody, and no opposition leader or politician is ready for that.”

U.S. Balkans envoy Robert Gelbard met with nine Serbian opposition leaders last weekend in Montenegro, Serbia’s Western-leaning sister republic, and told them that the United States will take no direct action to oust Milosevic, participants said. He urged them to join forces and channel unrest into peaceful pressure for change.

Goran Svilanovic, president of the Civil Alliance for Serbia, who attended the meeting, said unity would be difficult. Milosevic has a history of playing opposition leaders off against each other and, more recently, portraying some of them as wartime traitors.

“The opposition is the problem, not Milosevic,” Svilanovic said. “We have to persuade people that we’re not losers.”