Serb Official Quits in Spy Scandal

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Momcilo Perisic quit Tuesday over a spy scandal that sparked a dispute with Washington.

Perisic, army chief during much of the rule of Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia’s former president, accepted a request from Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic to resign and waive his parliamentary immunity to allow a full investigation of the affair. Serbia is the main republic in Yugoslavia.

Army police arrested Perisic on Thursday together with a U.S. diplomat in a restaurant near Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, and accused the deputy prime minister of passing secret military documents. The diplomat was released Friday, Perisic a day later.

Perisic insisted that he was innocent but was stepping down to prevent the entire Serbian government from coming under pressure to quit. He said he had been set up by his political opponents “in the style of the darkest dictatorial regimes.”

“I will not let them use their showdown with me to topple the Serbian government at a moment when it represents the only possibility for carrying out economic and political reforms in the country,” Perisic wrote in his resignation letter.

Perisic did not name those he blamed. But the incident has become the latest in a long line of disputes between Djindjic and his government on one side, and Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and his supporters on the other.

The two leaders joined forces to topple Milosevic in October 2000 but have rarely seen eye to eye since then.

Djindjic has said the arrest was an attempt to discredit his government.