By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Feb 14 2000 (IPS)

The brutal assassination of Yugoslav Defence Minister, Pavle Bulatovic last week has placed the government under intense pressure to act on the growing lawlessness in the country.

However political analysts and opposition leaders have expressed fears that the government will use the situation to clampdown on those whose opinions differ from the regime.

Opposition parties have blamed the government for creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity in the country and have warned that they may use the situation to launch a campaign of repression.

“Serbia is a country of anarchy and chaos,” says Vladan Batic of the opposition Alliance for Change.

Bulatovic, 51, died last Monday when unidentified gunmen using automatic weapons began firing through the windows of the restaurant where he was seated.

Both the ruling party and the opposition have called the slaying was ‘an act of terrorism’ but the top government officials have accused the United States, Britain and France of “classic terrorism” and have described the killing as “an effort to destabilise Yugoslavia”.

Belgrade cut ties with US, Britain, France and Germany following NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), bombing of Yugoslavia last year.

In response the West has isolated the country, both politically and economically, insisting that cooperation can only be continued once President Slobodan Milosevic, who has been indicted for war crimes by the United Nations tribunal, is removed from power.

Analysts say Bulatovic’s slaying resembles that of Serbian police chief and deputy interior minister Radovan “Badza” Stojicic in another Belgrade restaurant in 1997.

According to media reports at least 15 prominent people have been gunned down in Belgrade since the early 1990’s. Less than a month ago, notorious paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, was gunned down in a hotel lobby.

At a special memorial service for Bulatovic, Yugoslavia’s deputy prime minister, Nikola Sainovic, promised a strong response to the assasination saying the struggle against state terrorism was a sacred and state duty.

Bulatovic, a close ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, hailed from Montenegro, the smaller of the two republics that make up the Yugoslav Federation. He was a senior member of the Socialist People’s Party (SPP) led by Yugoslav Prime Minister, Momir Bulatovic, another long-time Milosevic loyalist. The two men were not related.

Vuk Draskovic of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) has accused the regime of “state terrorism”. Drakovic was the only survivor of a mysterious car crash last October in which four of his aides were killed.

Independent analysts mostly blame the regime for the rising chaos in the country. “The act of terrorism must have a political background, which might be possible, but this has not been confirmed,” a former Interpol official, Budimir Babovic, told IPS.

Babovic noted that no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, as a terrorist group normally would. The regime “bears the responsibility for the citizens’ state of total insecurity which prevails in the country,” he added.

Belgrade analyst Ivan Torov says the manner in which the ruling Party has reacted to Bulatovic’s assassination “shows that ground is being prepared for the sharper, more brutal clampdown on those whose opinion differs from the opinion of the regime”.

“The aim is to frighten all political opponents and all those who see the real desperate situation in the country, to prevent the wave of discontent among people and to prevent the thing that seems inevitable – the stepping down of Slobodan Milosevic from power,” he says.

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