Sabotage Is Blamed in Damage to Serb Opposition TV Channel

Unknown attackers sabotaged a transmitter belonging to Serbia’s biggest opposition television channel Sunday, its director said. He blamed the crime on authorities.

In a separate announcement, an independent radio station said it had had problems with its signal since the afternoon.

Dragan Kojadinovic, director of the independent television channel Studio B, said the sabotage has prevented people outside Belgrade--the Yugoslav and Serbian capital--from viewing the station’s programs.

The perpetrators Sunday broke into a container housing the television’s transmitter about 25 miles south of Belgrade. They stole equipment worth $52,140.

The sabotage came a day after Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznjatovic--better known as Arkan--was gunned down in a Belgrade hotel.

The opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, which controls Studio B, said both the killing and the sabotage were part of what it calls “state terrorism.”

Government authorities have vehemently denied the charge and threatened lawsuits over the phrase, which party leader Vuk Draskovic first used after he narrowly survived a mysterious car crash in October in which his brother-in-law and three bodyguards were killed.