Yugoslav Parliament Votes to End State of War

The federal parliament here voted Thursday to end Yugoslavia’s 3-month-old state of war, lifting curbs on civil liberties imposed when NATO began bombing the country March 24. But angry Yugoslav army reservists brought the conflict home from Kosovo by blocking highways to demand overdue pay.

The parliament’s measure, which will take effect Saturday, passed after more than five hours of bitter debate over the government’s defeat in the Serbian province of Kosovo. It came as North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Javier Solana and U.S. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the alliance’s military commander in Europe, got a hero’s welcome from ethnic Albanians in the province’s capital, Pristina.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic asked for the vote in parliament, giving up his government’s power to exercise censorship of the news media, ban public gatherings and prohibit military-age men from leaving the country.

But the government, struggling to control and rebuild a shattered, restive country, was seeking legislation to revive some emergency economic powers that ended along with the state of war. Also, it was uncertain whether the government of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic, would act on its own to limit free assembly.

Moving to test the uncertain postwar climate, the opposition Alliance for Change announced that it would launch a series of summer rallies and petition drives calling for Milosevic’s resignation, starting Tuesday in 10 cities and towns across Serbia.

Former Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic joined in calling for Milosevic to step down. In Washington, the State Department offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Milosevic and other suspects indicted by a U.N. tribunal for war crimes in Yugoslavia and its former republics.

Milosevic’s immediate headache, however, was a highway mutiny by hundreds of homecoming reservists who set up roadblocks in central Serbia and refused to go home or disarm until they got paid. So far his government has appeared able, at least in the short term, to weather its defeat in Kosovo--as long as the army and police remained orderly and loyal.

The revolt began Wednesday in the Yugoslav army’s 125th Motorized Brigade, which was awarded a National Hero group decoration for its service in Kosovo. Brigade members parked tanks in two places across the highway between Kraljevo and their base in Trstenik, witnesses said, and threw empty beer bottles at army officers who offered them a partial settlement.

Reservists were supposed to earn about $5 a day for Kosovo duty, but most have not been paid since April. Instead, some have been offered discounts on their electric and telephone bills, credits for the purchase of firewood or coal for the winter, or clothing in army surplus stores.

Moving swiftly to defuse the revolt, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, who was the top commander in Kosovo, landed at Trstenik in a helicopter Thursday with enough cash to pay off the brigade and clear the highway, local journalists reported.

Reservists Block Roads, Causing Traffic Jams

But by that time, the protest had spread, and a few hundred artillery and antiaircraft reservists were blocking the Belgrade-Kragujevac highway at the village of Cerovac, the independent Beta news agency said.

At the same time, reservists of the 5522nd Tank Brigade barricaded all four roads in and out of Kraljevo, a city of 126,000 people about 80 miles south of Belgrade, causing traffic jams several miles long, witnesses said. A fifth group from the brigade blocked a bridge in central Kraljevo with an armored personnel carrier topped by a heavy machine gun.

By nightfall, authorities in Kraljevo had made no move to clear the roads. But police raided the local television studio and seized film it had aired of the reservists on the afternoon news.

“They are furious at Milosevic and the government first for sending them to Kosovo and then for not paying them,” said Alexandra Jelesinjevic, editor of the city’s Globus Radio station. “But they’re not demanding any political changes--just their money.”

“They are really poor people,” said Kraljevo Mayor Radoslav Jovic, who was attending the parliamentary session in Belgrade and keeping in touch by cell phone with his City Hall. “They have no jobs to come home to. It’s a matter of survival for them and their families.”

Lawmakers Don’t Bring Up Milosevic

Serbian civilians fleeing Kosovo after the withdrawal of the Yugoslav military and police also have held protests in recent days and openly blamed Milosevic for their troubles. The refugees have accused the 57-year-old president of losing the province and allowing them to be run out of their homes by armed ethnic Albanian separatists.

By contrast, the president’s name was not mentioned in the special joint session of parliament. Nor was the indictment of Milosevic and four top aides on war crimes charges issued last month by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

But Milosevic’s previous claims of a favorable outcome in Kosovo were challenged so fiercely that members of his Socialist Party of Serbia moved in advance to keep the session off television.

Instead, critics of the president attacked a speech by Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, who opened the session by noting that the peace agreement maintains Yugoslavia’s sovereignty over Kosovo.

“Our leaders don’t want to tell the truth to our people,” Aleksandar Vucic of the hawkish Serbian Radical Party said. “Our people are sad and humiliated. What’s to celebrate, with so many dead, so many robberies, such a big exodus of Serbs from Kosovo?

“How can you talk about sovereignty?” Vucic said, referring to visits this week by NATO leaders and the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy--whom he called “the gang of four”--to Kosovo without Yugoslavia’s consent.

When the debate had run its course, parliament voted with one abstention to end the state of war, in effect abolishing 31 wartime decrees.

But lawmakers were to resume their session today to debate whether to restore some of those decrees in the form of laws that would continue the Central Bank’s tight control of foreign trade and the federal government’s extraordinary taxing powers.

The official news agency Tanjug said price controls will remain in effect until the government comes up with a plan to rebuild the country. In his speech to parliament, Prime Minister Bulatovic demanded compensation for NATO’s bombing damage, which independenteconomists have estimated at $30 billion.

He also called for an end to sanctions imposed on the country during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and asked that Yugoslavia be readmitted to the United Nations and other international organizations.

Foreign ministers of the Group of 8--Russia and the seven leading industrial nations--will meet Wednesday in New York with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss creation of an interim civilian government for Kosovo and other steps to rebuild the war-torn province.

In Pristina, where ethnic Albanians greeted Solana and Clark as liberators and reached out to shake their hands, the former pledged that NATO will “create a new environment for the rebuilding of Kosovo, for the establishment of law and order, for the safe return of all the refugees to their homes . . . and the full investigation of all war crimes and punishments.”

Despite the jubilant street welcome, Pristina still is a dangerous place. Reprisal killings occur almost daily in and around the city and across Kosovo.

Some ethnic Albanians are kicking in the doors of Pristina apartments that they assume were left empty by fleeing Serbs. If Serbs are still inside, they are ordered to leave.

NATO’s initial response has been to issue photocopied notices, signed by a British lieutenant colonel, asserting a homeowner’s claim. “The bearer of this letter has proof of ownership of the disputed property,” the notice says. “Please vacate the premises IMMEDIATELY.”

If that leaves the new occupants without a place to live, they should contact the British military’s civilian affairs office, “where suitable shelter will be sought for you,” the letter advises.

In other developments Thursday:

* In Pristina, NATO spokesman Jan Joosten confirmed that attackers who fired on U.S. Marines on Wednesday were Serbs. The Marines returned fire in the town of Zegra, about 25 miles southeast of Pristina, killing one assailant and wounding two others. No Marines were hurt.

* The Pentagon announced that 315 U.S. warplanes that participated in the bombing of Yugoslavia will return to bases in the United States during the next few weeks. Defense Department spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said the planes include tankers and A-10 “Warthog” tank-busting jets flown and maintained by reservists, who will be released from active duty as soon as they arrive home.

* Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, said restoring law and order in Kosovo was a top priority and the United Nations had stepped up its appeal to countries to supply 3,000 police officers.

* In New York, UNICEF pledged to give every child of primary-school age in Kosovo the chance to get back into school in September. UNICEF said the educational system in the province had been devastated, with many schools looted or destroyed. Plans call for repairing some of the damaged schools and for holding classes in other structures.

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Times staff writers Valerie Reitman, Julie Tamaki and Paul Watson in Pristina, Norman Kempster in Washington and John J. Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this report.