The Vise Tightens on Milosevic

The circle of violence and recrimination drew tighter in Yugoslavia with the assassination of President Slobodan Milosevic’s defense minister in a brazen shooting Monday at a Belgrade restaurant. The question in the capital is whether Pavle Bulatovic was killed for what he did or what he knew. Either way, the pressure on Milosevic mounts.

As defense minister, Bulatovic directed last year’s Serbian campaign to drive the Kosovars from their province into Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, a forced and bloody evacuation that took untold lives. That history alone would make Bulatovic a target for Kosovars, but the immediate suspicion in his killing fell on fellow Serbs. Did Bulatovic know too much? Could he incriminate the president?

His assassination follows the Jan. 15 slaying of Zeljko Raznatovic, nicknamed Arkan, a paramilitary leader known for his vicious tactics in the Bosnian war, one of the first of Milosevic’s failures to hold the old Yugoslavia together.

Memorial services for Bulatovic brought promises of vengeance from the high command, including Chief of Staff Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic. Milosevic sat beside the minister’s weeping widow. Both the president and Ojdanic have been indicted for war crimes by a United Nations court, and those charges should be pressed.

The unraveling of Marshal Tito’s old Communist Yugoslavia continues, with increasing antipathy between Serbia and its only remaining partner republic, Montenegro, which is looking increasingly toward its prospects with the West.

In Belgrade, with his henchmen and indicted generals fearful of leaving the republic, Milosevic stands increasingly alone. The Serb nationalists who prop up his regime may soon look for new leadership in a country betrayed by its current command.