Milosevic Party Close to Deal on Power Shift

Allies of Slobodan Milosevic, one of whom confirmed he still meets with the indicted war crimes suspect, were close to a deal Friday to surrender their last bastion of power.

Senior officials from Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia and the coalition that brought President Vojislav Kostunica to power a week ago now agree publicly that Serbian parliamentary elections will be held in December.

With well over 90% of the Yugoslav population, Serbia dominates the federation it shares with Montenegro. Milosevic allies who control the republic’s government and parliament could legally hold onto power until next July.

Kostunica’s 18-party coalition, which announced a deal Monday to dissolve Serbia’s parliament, only to see the accord immediately fall apart, declared that they had reached a new agreement Friday.

Vladan Batic, one of Kostunica’s top aides, told reporters that Serbia’s parliamentary elections will be held Dec. 24. Milosevic’s Socialists would say only that comprehensive negotiations are continuing and that they expect a deal soon.

“The talks are in progress, and elementary conditions have been created that would bring an agreement,” said Nikola Sainovic, Milosevic’s point man during the war in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia now under United Nations control.

Sainovic also confirmed that he is in regular contact with Milosevic, raising suspicions that the former Yugoslav president and his inner circle might be insisting on guarantees that they won’t be prosecuted.

“Milosevic is in Belgrade and we are meeting every day,” said Sainovic, who was indicted last year along with Milosevic and three other top officials by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague for atrocities committed by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo.

Borka Vucic, who served as Milosevic’s personal banker for years and was his most important sanctions buster, says she has not been in contact with Milosevic, who is believed to be living in one of his homes in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital.

Milosevic has not been seen in public since Oct. 5, when he appeared on television to concede defeat, congratulate Kostunica and vow to rebuild the party he founded a decade ago.

“I will not consult Milosevic because I don’t have that opportunity,” Vucic told a news conference as she struggled to retain her position as president of Beogradska Banka, by far the country’s largest bank. Milosevic himself worked at the bank before turning to politics in the early 1980s.

Vucic is suspected of helping Milosevic and his cronies hide millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts, but she insists she did nothing but serve her country’s interests as it tried to survive crushing international sanctions first imposed in May 1992.

Vucic once ran Beogradska’s branch in Cyprus, where many here suspect Milosevic stashed at least some of his money, probably in the names of people who weren’t known to agencies that were enforcing the sanctions and freezing official accounts.

Aleksandar Dobric, her executive director, claimed that it would have been impossible to transfer large amounts of money to personal accounts.

Economic sanctions forced businesses and others “to deal in large quantities of cash,” Dobric said. “The cash that went through the banks could not end up in any private accounts.”

Because Yugoslavia’s national bank required anyone transferring hard currency out of the country to register and submit a form, all such transactions are on the books and available for inspection, he said.

Like many in Milosevic’s collapsing regime who are looking for protection from prosecution, Dobric sounded as if he might be offering information in exchange for a deal. He said he could talk only privately about whether transactions occurred outside official bank channels.

Kostunica’s supporters are trying to replace Vucic, just as they have managers in state-run institutions across Serbia, often violently. But Vucic, who interrupted the news conference to take a call from Kostunica, insisted that she will not step down unless the bank’s shareholders vote her out of office.

Asked if he feared being extradited to The Hague for trial, Sainovic did not answer directly but referred obliquely to Kostunica’s declaration that he doesn’t respect the tribunal’s legality.

“Various political subjects” have taken a stand against the tribunal in the past and “they will have an opportunity now to show what they really think,” Sainovic said.

He shrugged off reports of mounting dissent in the ranks of the Socialist party, saying top leaders had stopped an effort by officials in the southern city of Nis to have Milosevic replaced as party chief.

But the Socialists have broken off their alliance with the neo-Communist Yugoslav United Left, headed by Milosevic’s wife, Mirjana Markovic, Sainovic said.