Montenegrin Advisor’s Slaying Adds to Tension Ahead of Today’s Vote

Montenegro’s men in blue are usually honest and well behaved. But there are so many of them--one in 32 citizens is a cop--that even admirers of President Milo Djukanovic say he’s creating a police state.

The Western-backed leader has built up his 20,000-strong force as a security blanket while steering Montenegro cautiously away from Serbia, its sister republic in the Yugoslav federation led by President Slobodan Milosevic.

Whatever sense of protection that the built-up police force gave to independence-minded Montenegrins, however, was severely shaken last month when an assassin gunned down Djukanovic’s top security advisor outside his home and vanished into the night.

Montenegrin officials suspect that Milosevic’s secret service, operating from a Yugoslav army base in Montenegro, carried out the hit to remind the restive republic of its vulnerability. The slain aide, Goran Zugic, 38, had overseen the rapid expansion of Montenegro’s uniformed force.

The May 31 slaying in this easygoing provincial capital stunned Montenegrins, who are calling it the first assassination against their independence movement. It has raised the level of tension in the campaign for municipal elections today that are seen as a midterm test for Djukanovic’s defiant, pro-Western course.

“It looks like a terrorist act against democracy and against the security of the people,” said the Montenegrin leader, looking grim and upset at a recent memorial service for his aide and close friend.

The service drew about 10,000 people, twice the number at Djukanovic’s closing campaign rally Thursday night. Hundreds of police were on hand for the rally, and a score of plainclothes agents surrounded the tall, popular president as he waded through the crowd.

Djukanovic, who took office in January 1998, has refused to recognize Milosevic’s authority and dropped the Yugoslavia dinar in favor of the German mark. Milosevic retaliated with a trade blockade between Serbia and Montenegro, but Djukanovic has overcome many of its effects through infusions of Western aid--$55 million from the United States and $19 million from the European Union this year.

The Western largess has enabled Montenegro to meet basic human needs while recruiting, training and equipping a loyal police force. The force is needed, Montenegrin officials say, to counter 14,000 Yugoslav troops based in the republic and about 900 Milosevic loyalists in the 7th Military Police Battalion.

As police chief in Podgorica, Zugic once put down an anti-government riot by unarmed Milosevic supporters. Later, as security advisor, he had the task of neutralizing Serbian secret service and paramilitary threats in Montenegro.

Yet the lawyer-turned-cop was traveling alone the night he died.

Officials said he was shot three times in the head as he was locking his black Audi A8 a few steps from the door of his apartment building on a still-busy street here just after 11 p.m. Police set up checkpoints and detained hundreds of people for questioning but reported no arrests and no leads.

Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic accused the CIA last week of planning the killing to make it look like Milosevic’s work and aggravate tension between Serbia and Montenegro. He charged that Montenegrin Interior Minister Vukasin Maras, Zugic’s rival in the security hierarchy here, also was involved in the plot.

The CIA denied any role, and Maras dismissed the accusation as the product of an “insane, sick and tragic mind.”

Noting that four close Milosevic allies have been slain in Serbia this year, Rifat Rastoder, deputy chairman of Montenegro’s parliament, said the killing here was “the first, most direct attempt to spread the politics of the gun from Serbia into Montenegro, to create conditions for a possible state of emergency.”

Two pro-Milosevic parties from the ruling coalition in Serbia have teamed with allies in Montenegro’s Socialist People’s Party to try to oust Djukanovic’s forces in today’s municipal elections in Podgorica and Herceg Novi. Milosevic’s supporters are a relatively strong minority in both cities.

Both sides are going all out in what they call an electoral test of the republic’s identity. Opposition leader Predrag Bulatovic has accused Djukanovic of betraying Yugoslavia and taking orders from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Djukanovic calls Bulatovic a puppet of Milosevic and says Montenegro has the choice of joining Europe or remaining part of a pariah state.

The Montenegrin leader is also under attack by the small Liberal Alliance for refusing to declare outright independence and for building an oversized police force with the alleged aim of intimidating his democratic critics.

“Djukanovic is building a private Praetorian Guard,” said Miroslav Vickovic, a Liberal Alliance leader. “Does anyone have the illusion that these policemen could defeat the Yugoslav army? With such a force, only one thing is certain--that our president will be the last to die.”