TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/032591/0325003.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.3 KB | 116 lines

                ]C
                                                            WORLD, Page 34

YUGOSLAVIA

Mass Bedlam in Belgrade


After a turbulent week of protests, one Serbian leader resigns
and another sees his grip on power weakened

By JAMES L. GRAFF/BELGRADE


    Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic, has spent months
poised on the brink of conflict with neighboring Croatia on
behalf of the ethnic Serbs living there. But last week, the
most harrowing for Yugoslavia since the end of World War II,
Serbia was fighting battles entirely within its own borders.
In a scenario that seems to have become a rite of passage in
the new Europe, the people of the republic were pitted against
an autocratic regime, Serbia's communist government. The
showdown came in the capital, Belgrade, where anticommunist
demonstrations paralyzed the city center for three tense days
and nights after a weekend of violence.

    The chief political casualties from the week's ferment were
Yugoslavia's two senior Serbs. On Friday, Borisav Jovic, the
Serbian leader of Yugoslavia's eight-man presidency, resigned
after a majority of his colleagues from the country's five
other republics rejected an army proposal to declare a national
state of emergency. The next day, two more presidency members
who supported Jovic followed suit. Voicing fears that the
country was headed inexorably toward civil war, Jovic said he
was "not ready to go along with such decisions that are leading
to the breakup of the country." For his part, Serbian
president Slobodan Milosevic found his grip on power seriously
weakened by the turmoil. With the prospect that the army might
yet impose a crackdown, Yugoslavia was left teetering between
hope and fear.

    The fulcrum of uncertainty was Milosevic, 49, who rose to
power in 1986 on a populist wave of Serbian nationalism and was
overwhelmingly confirmed as president -- under the banner of
the renamed Socialist Party of Serbia -- in elections last
December. In his efforts to fuel nationalist passions and to
silence dissent, Milosevic exercised ironclad control over
Serbia's state-owned media, which in turn waged a war of words
against secessionist-minded Croatians and Slovenes and the
equally nationalistic but more democratic Serbian opposition.
On March 9 some 100,000 people crowded into Belgrade's
Republic Square to register their opposition.

    A pitched battle broke out when Serbian riot police, firing
rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, charged the
ralliers. Many of the protesters fought back with trash cans,
paving blocks ripped from the sidewalks and even furniture from
open-air cafes. As the crowd swarmed toward the Serbian
parliament building, a 17-year-old boy, Branivoje Milinovic,
was killed by police gunfire; more than 100 other people were
injured, and a policeman later died of head wounds. The federal
army, commanded by a largely Serbian officer corps, deployed
tanks and armored personnel carriers at Serbia's request, in
what Croatian prime minister Josip Manolic called "an act
against the constitution."

    Early last week thousands of students gathered in protest
on Terazije square, one of Belgrade's main thoroughfares. They
demanded the resignation of state-controlled media managers and
the Serbian minister of police, as well as the release of the
more than 600 demonstrators who had been detained.

    As the protests persisted, Milosevic began parceling out
concessions. His appointees at the head of RadioTelevision
Belgrade resigned. Vuk Draskovic, leader of the opposition
Serbian Renewal Movement, was released after spending three
days in prison. Serbian minister of police Radmilo Bogdanovic,
held responsible by the opposition for police violence, offered
his resignation.

    But Milosevic and his regime are clearly not not going to
bow out with a whimper. In three tense marathon sessions of the
collective federal presidency (made up of representatives of
all six republics and the two Serbian provinces of Vojvodina
and Kosovo), Jovic, backed by the army chief of staff, had
pressed for a military crackdown. "Milosevic is a fighting
man," said Milovan Djilas, a dissident communist who was jailed
repeatedly by Marshal Josip Broz Tito in the 1950s and '60s.
"He won't go for a fundamental change of policy."

    Many Serbs, though hurt by a depression that saw the
republic's industrial production drop 35% last year, back
Milosevic because they fear the prospect of a painful switch
to a market-oriented economy. Strong support also comes from
the federal army, whose officers enjoy privileges that would
probably be jettisoned by a liberal Serbian government.

    It may not be enough, however, to wrest the initiative back
from the anticommunist movement. "Milosevic's castle has been
destroyed," said Desimir Tosic, vice president of the
opposition Democrats. "He could make a desperate move to stay
in power, but it won't be the same power he held in the past."

    Such questions are moot, however, if the army decides to
take matters into its own hands. The spate of presidential
resignations last week left Yugoslavia in confusion over just
what civilian authority ultimately commands the military. If
the answer turns out to be Milosevic and the army leaders, the
country could sink into an even grimmer cycle of violence.