Yugoslav leader warns Milosevic as standoff continues

12:00 pm

BELGRADE - Yugoslavia's reformist leaders are grappling with defiant ex-president Slobodan Milosevic, still resisting arrest in a villa compound over a reinforced bunker protected by an armed guard of diehard loyalists.

After two failed attempts to bring in the former strongman on charges of corruption and abuse of power, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica warned that he did not want bloodshed, but no one was above the law if the state was to survive.

It has been some 30 hours since the first bid to serve Milosevic with a summons ran into his Praetorian guard.

This morning, two blacked-out limousines entered the sealed-off area raising speculation about negotiations for his surrender. Two hours later they left with no apparent change.

"Police have got approval to complete the action," presidential adviser Predrag Simic said. But no one was saying when this would happen.

The discredited former Yugoslav president, also indicted by the UN War Crimes Tribunal, vowed he would "not go to prison alive."

One of his allies said supporters gathered outside the official villa he still occupies despite his fall from power would defend him with their lives.

Kostunica emerged from crisis talks saying he did not want bloodshed but no one was above the law. The Army and the Interior Ministry had "expressed their full accord."

"If the state is to survive, no one can be untouchable," Kostunica said, reading from a prepared statement.

"We shall not allow the state to plunge into crisis over one individual."

A source close to the talks with military and civilian officials said they agreed to go ahead with arresting Milosevic, whose guards wounded two policemen and a photographer.

"Whoever shoots at police must be taken to justice. Whoever receives a court summons must obey," Kostunica said.

Opponents and supporters of Milosevic clashed as the tension grew, throwing bottles, stones and clods of earth until they were separated by a police charge.

The government said Milosevic was under house arrest.

In the most dramatic attempt of the night to arrest him, masked commandos fought a gun battle with his private guards yesterday.

"We had intelligence reports saying that there was lots of ammunition, arms and explosives in the residence," Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic told a news conference.

With police still surrounding the walled compound, Tanjug news agency quoted Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic as saying Milosevic must be detained by the end of the day.

"There are no more doubts that the arrest will take place," he said.

Serbian Interior Minister Mihajlovic told reporters: "He will either come in by himself or we will take him in, with or without force."

Army Chief of Staff Nebojsa Pavkovic said Kostunica had told the army units officially guarding the mansion to leave, according to the television station B92.

Pavkovic insisted the army was cooperating with police after Mihajlovic said the arrest of Milosevic had been thwarted when the officer in charge of a unit guarding the villa had given the keys to the compound to private guards loyal to Milosevic.

Mihaljlovic said a meeting had been held, "but the problem could not be solved because of Yugoslav Army obstruction."

He also said Sinisa Vucinic, a senior member of the political party run by Milosevic's once powerful wife, had told the police to leave at gunpoint.

"We will defend our supreme commander with our lives, heart and love for our fatherland," Tanjug quoted him as saying later.

The commando raid came just before the expiry of a deadline set by US legislation for President Bush to declare whether Yugoslavia is cooperating with the UN tribunal and can avoid economic sanctions and a withholding of aid.

Milosevic is charged with abuse of office and financial crimes, but Mihajlovic said there was no current intent to send him to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted him for atrocities committed in Kosovo in 1999.

Belgrade may face economic sanctions and lose $US50 million ($NZ124 million) in aid if the US deems it is not cooperating with the UN court - but Washington appears likely to be satisfied with an attempt to put Milosevic behind bars, even if it is not for extradition.

The United States, Britain and France welcomed the effort to arrest Milosevic as an important step toward bringing him to justice on war crimes charges.

But in a surprisingly political comment, a war crimes tribunal judge said it looked like deliberate stalling.

"I can only guess this is simply a political approach to delay, for internal purposes, the decision," Fausto Pocar told Reuters in Italy.

Russia, traditionally a friend of Serbia, said the arrest was an internal matter and warned against foreign interference.

The attempted capture was denounced by Bosnian Serbs, whose nationalist cause in the 1992-95 Bosnian war was inspired and backed by Milosevic.

"We have started to look like some South American country where presidents are arrested and replaced like ordinary thieves," said Mileva Arantinovic, 51.

Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and general Ratko Mladic have also been indicted but are still at large.

In Kosovo, prized from the rule of Belgrade and Milosevic in 1999 by NATO attacks aimed at ending their repression of the area's ethnic Albanian majority, politicians were suspicious.

"This attempt to arrest Milosevic...is an attempt to maintain the democratic image of this regime by appearing to fulfil the demands of the international community," Jakup Krasniqi of the ethnic Albanian PDK party said in Pristina.

Others in the region were less cynical.

"The Belgrade authorities want to arrest Milosevic for his criminal activities and election fraud, for tactical reasons, so they can use it and then hand him over to the Hague tribunal," said Croatian President Stipe Mesic.

"Milosevic needs to be discredited in Serbia first, because he still has a numerous following."

Milosevic, a former communist functionary, muscled his way to the top of Yugoslav politics in the vacuum left by the death in 1980 of post-World War Two dictator Marshal Tito.

He earned a reputation as an unscrupulous pragmatist ready to embrace war and nationalism for the sake of power during his terms as Serbian and Yugoslav president.

The Serb nationalist sentiment he stirred was one of the main sparks that ignited the wars which spread across the old Yugoslavia in the 1990s, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Western powers viewed him with distaste but were forced to involve him in Bosnian peace efforts. Later, his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo prompted NATO's 1999 air war.

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Yugoslavia

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Serbian Ministry of Information

Serbian Radio - Free B92

Otpor: Serbian Student Resistance Movement