Gunfire Punctuates Day of Political Jostling in Yugoslavia

The political battle against allies of deposed leader Slobodan Milosevic almost erupted into a real shootout outside the Serbian parliament Monday as bodyguards for an ultranationalist leader responded to a hail of rocks from protesters by firing handguns into the air.

The brief outbreak of violence followed a day of heated argument over a tentative agreement to replace Serbia’s government and hold early elections in December, which would bring down the last bastion of Milosevic’s crumbling, yet still dangerous, power structure.

Yugoslavia’s new president, Vojislav Kostunica, won some key victories, including the resignations of two important Milosevic allies: federal Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic and Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who along with Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes.

Kostunica also gained an end to European Union sanctions against Yugoslavia--and the prospect of $2 billion in European aid.

But the arguing over Serbia’s government is proof that what Kostunica calls a “democratic revolution” is far from finished. Kostunica’s critics say secret deals are being done that may undermine the transition to a real democracy.

Vojislav Seselj, a former Milosevic ally who once organized paramilitary units in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, walked with officials of his Serbian Radical Party from the Serbian parliament into an angry mob of students and Kostunica supporters, witnesses said.

Protesters shouted, “Fascist!” and hurled rocks in response to a fiery speech in the legislature by Seselj, who accused Kostunica of carrying out a coup in the guise of last week’s popular uprising.

“Police, factories and institutions have been hijacked. We will not legalize that,” Seselj said.

Seselj said that last week’s revolt was justified, but he added: “What is happening afterward is nothing but robbery. They are taking banks with guns, and [Kostunica’s alliance] wants to control the Interior Ministry police.”

Seselj’s bodyguards fired at least three rounds into the air and brandished automatic rifles as they led him to his car.

Milosevic loyalists in the parliament were stalling a deal to hold early elections.

Earlier Monday, Kostunica’s top lieutenant, Zoran Djindjic, announced an agreement to form a transitional Serbian government and hold parliamentary elections Dec. 17. But Milosevic allies kept the issue off the official agenda, forcing more back-room negotiations.

To help Kostunica consolidate his 2-day-old presidency, the European Union on Monday lifted its principal sanctions against Yugoslavia, while maintaining others designed to punish Milosevic and his cronies.

Javier Solana, the EU’s chief of foreign policy and military matters, said it was vital to help the Serbian people as quickly as possible.

Meeting in Luxembourg, the foreign ministers of the 15 EU countries ordered an immediate end to petroleum and air travel embargoes that had been decreed against Milosevic’s Yugoslavia.

The ban on commercial air travel to and from Yugoslavia had been suspended last March through March 2001. The ban on oil supplies was levied in 1999 to penalize the Milosevic regime for “ethnic cleansing” operations in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. According to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, shipments of gasoline and other petroleum products to Yugoslavia could resume in the next few days.

The EU ministers also stated their intention to extend the trade bloc’s Balkan development program to Yugoslavia but made no hard and fast commitments. The seven-year program is supposed to include $2 billion for Serbia but has yet to be approved by EU finance ministers and the European Parliament.

The ministers also proposed giving farm and industrial goods made in Yugoslavia duty-free access to the EU market, and a formal agreement that would grant the country privileged relations with the EU.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, whose country holds the revolving EU presidency, is to fly today to Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, for talks with Kostunica. In addition, the new Yugoslav president has been invited to the two-day EU summit that opens Friday in the French Atlantic resort of Biarritz.

Untouched by Monday’s decision were European sanctions that freeze the assets of Milosevic, his family members and his entourage and that ban them from entering any member nation of the European Union.

Despite the political disputes in Belgrade, Serbia’s parliament did approve a new election law intended to prevent fraud and establish a better balance between large and small parties. But negotiators delayed discussion of what will happen to Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, who is also wanted on war crimes charges by the international tribunal in The Hague.

Under an agreement being negotiated, Serbia’s government would be replaced by technical experts and representatives of Kostunica’s 18-party alliance and parties led by Milosevic, Seselj and longtime opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, said Djindjic, the top Kostunica aide. The agreement bogged down in political bickering.

The transitional government would concentrate on providing essentials, such as electricity and food, so that there are no disturbances in the country before the elections, he told reporters.

“Until then we will try, with as little damage as possible, to get through these next two months,” Djindjic added. “There is tremendous willingness among those present [in negotiations] to reach a political solution.”

Dragan Tomic, speaker of the Serbian parliament and a top Milosevic loyalist, told reporters that parliament will reconvene within days and settle the dispute over naming a transitional government.

Draskovic returned to Belgrade after months in self-imposed exile in Montenegro, Serbia’s partner in the Yugoslav federation, where he survived an assassination attempt June 15. He blamed agents of Milosevic and said it was the second time that the now-deposed Yugoslav leader had tried to kill him.

Draskovic, who lost credibility by refusing to join the Kostunica coalition, is now indirectly criticizing him for failing to stop attacks on remnants of the old regime.

“Nobody has the right to break into people’s homes without any authority, to break into companies, to break into institutions and kick people out or lynch them,” Draskovic told reporters. “That is not how a democrat identifies himself.

“I’m fighting so that after the downfall of Milosevic, who brought misery upon us and who filled many hearts with hatred, we should behave like Christians, like democrats and to bring everyone who was a sinner to court [and] ensure nobody is a victim of collective, personal revenge.”

Draskovic also called for the release of prominent Kosovo Albanian prisoner Flore Brovina. Milosevic jailed the pediatrician and poet as a terrorist during last year’s war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Brovina is a heroine among ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, which is now under United Nations control and which Kostunica has promised to bring back under Yugoslav sovereignty.

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Times staff writer John-Thor Dahlburg in Paris and special correspondent Zoran Cirjakovic in Belgrade contributed to this report.