Serb who refused to go quietly rocks nation

11.00am

BELGRADE - The attempted suicide on Thursday of a former Serb leader who refused to go quietly to The Hague has rocked a nation sorely split by pressure to comply with Western demands on the hand-over of war crimes suspects.

Former Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, knowing his name was near the top of the list, put a bullet through his head shortly after the Yugoslav parliament passed a law agreeing to co-operate with the Hague tribunal as the price of Western aid.

Stojiljkovic, a white-haired father of two born in 1937, was listed in critical condition and on life support systems in a Belgrade hospital.

Stojiljkovic is no widely loved figure. But his action is likely to shake the pro-Western government in Belgrade, many of whose members saw the new law as an insult to the Serbs even while they voted for it.

Anger, rather than national grief, was the most predictable reaction to the tragedy of one of the classic apparatchiks of Slobodan Milosevic's era of authoritarian rule.

But his act of desperation, justified in a 15-page hand-written suicide note, may make him a hero to many diehard nationalists.

Refusing to be taken alive, he accused the country's pro-Western reformists of selling him out and staining the national honour.

"By this act I, as a deputy of the federal parliament, express my protest against all members of the puppet authorities..." said his message to the country.

"For my death I hold responsible and directly accuse (Serbian Prime Minister) Zoran Djinjdic, (Yugoslav President) Vojislav Kostunica..." he wrote. "Patriotic citizens of this country will know how to avenge me."

The law graduate built a career in politics starting in Milosevic's hometown, Pozarevac.

A Socialist Party comrade and chess partner of the former president, who is now on trial at The Hague, Stojiljkovic had warned that he would defy the international court.

He had been indicted by the Tribunal along with Milosevic on charges of war crimes committed by special police units in Kosovo in 1998-99, when some 10,000 Kosovo Albanians are believed to have been killed in "anti-terrorist" raids.

Stojiljkovic was interior minister from April 1997 until October 2000. His ministry was in charge of the police units widely accused of committing atrocities in Kosovo, as Serbian army and police units fought to crush an ethnic Albanian insurgency with what the West said was disproportionate force.

He had kept a low profile since leaving office but remained a member of the federal parliament. He also defended himself as a "man of honour" and said he would be there when parliament voted on the war-criminals hand-over law that was bitterly fought between nationalists and pragmatists.

The majority who believe cooperation with the West and the Hague tribunal is imperative for Serbia's future won the vote.

Stojiljkovic was one of three senior officials of the Slobodan Milosevic era widely seen as prime candidates for extradition after the law was passed.

A former president of both Yugoslav and Serbian chambers of commerce, he was a member of the former communist party which became Milosevic's Socialist Party.

When Milosevic was toppled, he resigned charging that his ouster was demanded by "Nato representatives in Yugoslavia and those who were shielding and defending crimes".

Stojiljkovic said the police had worked "patriotically, professionally and very responsibly in these difficult times over the last few years."

- REUTERS

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