Milosevic storms back to centre stage

BELGRADE - Slobodan Milosevic staged a defiant political comeback, winning re-election as leader of Serbia's Socialist party and denouncing the mass uprising that forced him from power as a coup.

An unrepentant Milosevic accused the West of genocide against Serbs, said Yugoslav media organisations were controlled by foreign intelligence services and called the U.N. war crimes tribunal "the new Gestapo".

The former Yugoslav president, blamed by the West for four Balkan wars in the last decade, delivered the attack at a special congress of the Socialist Party to prepare for Serbian parliamentary elections due on December 23.

"War is waged against this country with money. Great amounts of money are handed over to those who are supposed to accept everything that goes against this country," Milosevic said in his first major appearance since losing power last month.

Milosevic, the only candidate for the leadership, was re-elected with a vast majority of the votes, a senior Socialist official told reporters who were not allowed into the congress.

Delegates - a few waving red, white and blue Serbian flags - gave Milosevic a standing ovation as he walked into the conference hall, smiling and waving to the crowd.

In his speech, he accused his enemies of trying to rewrite the history of last year's NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

"The situation is absurd. Those who defended the country and were in the country during the war are declared enemies now," television showed Milosevic telling the congress, which was attended by more than 2,000 delegates.

"Those who fled the country, supported the bombing and cooperated with the aggressors are now appearing in the role of patriots and saviours of the country," he added.

"Thieves are calling honest people thieves."

Commentators had foreseen the congress would be a victory for hardliners backing Milosevic, also predicting that that course would put the Socialists on the fast track to completing their political suicide in the Serbian elections next month.

Milosevic and the Socialists lost to Vojislav Kostunica and a pro-democracy alliance in presidential and parliamentary elections in September. Milosevic claimed Kostunica had not won outright victory until the uprising forced him out.

"Everybody in this hall knows what kind of violence and lawlessness has taken place since the coup on October 5," said Milosevic, wearing a dark suit, pale shirt and red tie.

Milosevic, 59, was referring to a wave of popular takeovers at state companies and institutions after his overthrow.

His opponents say some quick changes were necessary to remove the authoritarian leader's corrupt cronies from key positions.

After he admitted defeat to Kostunica, Milosevic first disappeared from public view completely. But his return to prominence on Saturday appeared assiduously prepared.

First, reports leaked out that he had begun to attend party meetings again. Then he was shown on state television twice in the week leading up to the congress rallying senior Socialist officials at meetings and calling for unity.

Both Milosevic's words and his demeanour gave no indication that he plans to withdraw from political life, as demanded by Western governments and opponents at home who want to try him for war crimes or abuses of power.

He strode calmly up to the main doors of Belgrade's Sava Centre conference hall to enter the congress, protected by a phalanx of dark-suited security guards and applauded by a few dozen supporters. He ignored reporters' questions.

The unfamiliar feeling of defeat has provoked an internal crisis among the Socialists, successors to the League of Communists which ran the old Yugoslavia for more than four decades after World War Two.

But Milosevic put most of the blame for defeat on his ultra-nationalist former coalition partners and dismissed the recent spate of resignations by top Socialists.

"We should not worry about them. It is now clear that they entered the party because it was in power, they were in the party as long as it was in power," he said.

"For the first time it is not and they are leaving as self-serving cowards."

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Revolution in Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Serbian Ministry of Information

Serbian Radio - Free B92

Otpor: Serbian Student Resistance Movement