Belgrade Throws a Party as Milosevic Concedes Defeat

Slobodan Milosevic conceded defeat Friday in Yugoslavia’s presidential elections, bowing to massive street demonstrations against his bid to prolong a 13-year dictatorship that turned his country into a war-stained international pariah.

Appearing pale and exhausted, the Yugoslav leader yielded in a one-minute televised speech. His concession came after the country’s highest court and its strongest ally, Russia, both recognized democratic opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica’s triumph in the Sept. 24 vote, and after the army pledged to obey the president-elect.

“I congratulate Mr. Kostunica on his electoral victory, and I wish much success to all citizens of Yugoslavia,” Milosevic said in a halting, emotion-choked voice.

The speech set off a long night of celebration with firecrackers and horn-honking in the streets of Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia and of its main republic, Serbia. The city was ruled for a second day by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who on Thursday had seized the federal parliament building, turned the state-controlled media against Milosevic and forced the police to stand back.

With the pillars of his regime crumbling one by one, Milosevic, 59, had little choice but to stop trying to block his rival from taking office. He spoke on television after an hourlong meeting with Kostunica.

But the defeated strongman, indicted last year by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, gave no sign of wanting to seek asylum abroad.

Instead, he indicated a desire to keep his hand in politics, saying he intended to “rest a bit and spend more time with my family . . . and after that to help my party gain force and contribute to future prosperity.”

Kostunica, 56, a soft-spoken lawyer barely known outside Yugoslavia until the election, appeared set to take the oath as president when the country’s newly elected parliament convenes, as early as this weekend.

The government had acknowledged that Kostunica outpolled Milosevic in the five-candidate election but said he received less than a majority of votes, requiring a runoff. The opposition rejected that claim, saying Kostunica had taken about 52% of the vote. Milosevic lost his last legal basis for keeping power Friday when the Constitutional Court reversed an earlier ruling that annulled the Sept. 24 vote and instead declared Kostunica the outright winner.

The president-elect said Friday that he had made contact with armed forces commanders and they agreed to “obey authority” rather than intervene to shore up Milosevic’s rule.

“At this point we have a very stable situation in the country,” Kostunica told a television call-in show late Friday.

Kostunica’s inauguration would formally end the last Communist-style dictatorship in Eastern Europe, 11 years after the Berlin Wall came down, and the change is expected to lead to a partial lifting of international sanctions against Yugoslavia as early as this week.

The sanctions--imposed by the United Nations, the United States and Europe to punish Milosevic for his role in four ethnic wars in the Balkans--have left Yugoslavia impoverished and isolated.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer announced that his country will push the 15-member European Union on Monday to immediately send aid to Belgrade to help the new authorities maintain the democratic momentum.

“We believe we have a duty to welcome a democratic Serbia with open arms,” Fischer told reporters in Berlin.

EU officials in Brussels said Monday’s meeting probably will result in the lifting of a European oil embargo and a ban on commercial flights, while financial sanctions will remain until the new government in Belgrade takes control of the economy from Milosevic’s cronies.

The wild celebration of Milosevic’s downfall went on well past 3 a.m. Saturday in the streets of Belgrade, where thousands of young people danced and sang, hugged and kissed as if it were a second chance at Millennium Eve.

Drunk more on the taste of freedom than on alcohol, they blew whistles, leaned out the windows of honking cars and joyously waved their black flags decorated with white-clenched fists--emblem of the student-led Otpor, or Resistance, movement, which started Yugoslavia along the road to open rebellion months ago.

After so many years of worrying about how the end of the Milosevic era would come, Serbia’s people are still reveling in the surprise of just how fast it all happened.

“I can’t believe what’s happening,” said Dragan Jankovic, 31, as he joined a swarm of celebrants in downtown Belgrade late Friday. “We waited for this for more than 10 years. I didn’t believe this would end so quickly. I thought more people would die. I thought we’d have to demonstrate for months.”

Russia, a powerful but erstwhile ally of Milosevic, helped speed the process by moving belatedly Friday to recognize Kostunica’s victory--more than a week after most Western nations did.

Milosevic had gone into hiding Thursday when his police lost control of the streets of Belgrade and other cities across Serbia. Some rumors had him and his family fleeing the country on a military cargo plane; another report said they were hiding out at a family compound in bunkers near the Romanian border.

But on Friday Milosevic turned up at another of his residences, in a Belgrade suburb, to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov.

Like a priest called in to administer last rites, Ivanov flew to the Yugoslav capital to meet with both Milosevic and Kostunica, symbolically presiding over an informal transfer of legitimacy and power that preceded the dictator’s televised concession.

Going first to a presidential office that Milosevic had seldom used, the Russian official appeared with Kostunica in front of television cameras and handed him a letter of congratulations from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin on the challenger’s “victory in the presidential elections.”

Ivanov then met with a tired but placid-looking Milosevic in a dimly lit sitting room of the residence. Both men said later that the conversation focused on the need to avoid bloodshed.

“Violence and destructive riots jeopardize the functioning of the state,” Milosevic said in a statement read on Yuinfo, the only television station now operated by his allies. Such behavior, he added, “weakens the state, which is only in the interest of the country’s enemies.”

“Milosevic emphasized his intention to seek a solution in a peaceful and legal manner, to avoid any use of force,” Ivanov told reporters. He suggested that Milosevic was not interested in fleeing the country or going into hiding.

“Being the leader of the largest political party in Serbia, he intends to continue to play a political role in the country,” Ivanov said.

Asked about the defeated strongman’s mood, the Russian official replied curtly, “Milosevic is an experienced politician, and he knows how to conceal his feelings.”

Sometime after the meeting, New Radio Belgrade began to broadcast a cryptic, two-sentence bulletin every few minutes. It noted that Kostunica had met with ex-President Milosevic, with the subtle suggestion that the strongman was now acknowledged to be a former leader.

Then came the real stunner: Milosevic himself, speaking in clipped phrases that made him sound angry or a little confused. Under Milosevic’s voice, the disc jockey played Jimi Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic,” with the late guitarist singing the telling phrase: “You’re just like cross-town traffic--so hard to get through to you.”

If and where Milosevic would travel next was unclear Friday.

Borislav Milosevic, the former leader’s brother and Yugoslavia’s ambassador in Moscow, suggested in a television interview that his brother should be given “guarantees”--presumably immunity from prosecution and assurances that he would not be turned over to the international war crimes tribunal.

“I don’t think he will leave,” Borislav Milosevic said in Moscow. “Why would he leave? Mr. Kostunica does not recognize this tribunal.”

Russia’s intervention drew enthusiastic applause from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said “This is great news” and gave reporters a thumbs up.

But other U.S. officials worried about the prospect, also backed by the Russians, that Milosevic will continue to play a role in his country’s politics.

“This is something we cannot support,” National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger told the Associated Press. “He is still an indicted war criminal and has to be accountable, we believe, for his actions.”

Allies of Milosevic still stand a chance of retaining control of the federal parliament chosen last month and electing him, or someone he designates, to the post of Yugoslav prime minister, who would form a government.

Milosevic’s forces won a majority of seats because his foes in Montenegro, Serbia’s independence-minded sister republic in the Yugoslav federation, boycotted the vote. That left the Montenegrin branch of Milosevic’s Socialist Party with a large number of seats.

But that faction distanced itself from Milosevic earlier in the week by recognizing Kostunica’s victory. Its allegiance in parliament is now up for grabs, with both sides currying its favor.

If the Montenegrin Socialists defect to Kostunica, he would have enough votes to keep Milosevic allies out of the government. But if they stick by Milosevic, Yugoslavia could end up with a power struggle between an old-guard prime minister and Kostunica.

The outcome of this struggle could determine whether Milosevic’s forces or the new president control the police and other key institutions.

As more than 100,000 people gathered outside parliament Friday, waiting for Kostunica to address them, it was again clear that the police were in no mood to move against the president-elect’s supporters.

But it also appeared that no senior police official or Cabinet minister from the Milosevic regime had actively switched sides. Hundreds of police officers in riot gear remained on duty inside the Serbian and Yugoslav police headquarters, staying out of the political fray.

In the only sign of defection from Milosevic’s diplomatic ranks, Ljubisa Igic, the Yugoslav ambassador to Denmark, issued an appeal Friday to fellow diplomats to heed the popular will.

“It is obvious that the wish of our people is that their country resolutely enters the process of democratic changes and economic reforms as part of Europe and the world,” he said.

*

Boudreaux reported from Budapest, Hungary, and Watson from Belgrade. Times staff writers David Holley in Pristina, Yugoslavia, Maura Reynolds in Moscow, Carol J. Williams in Berlin and John-Thor Dahlburg in Paris, and special correspondent Zoran Cirjakovic in Belgrade, contributed to this report.