By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, May 22 2000 (IPS)

Serbian opposition leaders are due in Moscow later this week to protest against the recent government takeover of opposition media outlets – all highly critical of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

“We want to inform the highest officials of Russia (of) the dramatic and unbearable situation in Serbia,” Vuk Draskovic, leader of the largest opposition party, Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), told IPS.

“We want that big country to use whatever means it has at its disposal to stop the terror in Serbia and to help (bring about) the return of tolerance into this country”.

Draskovic added that he would travel to Moscow with Zoran Djindjic, leader of Democratic Party and Vojislav Kostunica, leader of Democratic Party of Serbia. Sources close to those parties say that the leaders will be in Moscow on Friday, May 26.

The brutal takeover of opposition media was done with the help of several hundred policemen who entered the television and radio stations in the early hours of the morning last Wednesday.

The programmes aired by these station are reportedly received by over 50 percent of the country’s population.

“Serbia is deaf and mute now” Dragan Kojadinovic, manager general of Studio B, the television station, told IPS.

The takeovers provoked angry street protests by members of the public and the brutal intervention of police on Wednesday and Thursday. Belgrade Emergency Centre said that 200 protesters were treated after being beaten by the police.

The incidents started after the open-air Studio B news programmes were broadcast from the terrace of City Hall of Belgrade, watched by more than 10.000 audience. The capital and 14 biggest towns of Serbia are run by opposition parties at the local level. Belgrade is run by Draskovic’s SPO.

The task of getting help from Moscow seems pretty unclear for the opposition, as Russia has been very careful not to openly condemn Milosevic whose only brother, Bora, is Belgrade’s ambassador to Moscow.

Yugoslav Defence Minister General Dragoljub Ojdanic visited Moscow earlier this month, while Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic paid an official visit on May 16 and 17.

There were no reports on what was the purpose of Ojdanic’s visit, as the several years old agreement on military cooperation with Russia was put on hold last October by Moscow.

Ojdanic’s visit prompted fierce reactions from some Western countries, as the general is on the list of The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

He is indicted for war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Jovanovic returned to say that Russia is going to sell oil to Yugoslavia, worth some 32 million US dollars, and is prepared to give a 102 million dollars loan to Belgrade. Yugoslavia’s economy is almost dead after two rounds of international sanctions since 1992.

The country has no access to international financial institutions.

Yet, when street violence broke out in Belgrade, Russian ambassador Valery Yegushkin went to the City Hall on Wednesday and expressed his concern.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry voiced “serious concern” because of the situation in Belgrade and the takeover of Studio B and B2 92.

It’s statement said that “freedom of media remained inseparable from the democratic process”.

Predrag Simic, an adviser of Vuk Draskovic, told journalists over the weekend that the aim of the visit of Serbian opposition leaders was to “ask Russia to use its influence to calm down the government in Belgrade”.

“Russia can use its influence (on Belgrade) to prevent internal conflict in Serbia, that could be caused by some extremists within the government” he added.

Fears were mounting last week that street violence in Belgrade could spread all over Serbia, where growing discontent of impoverished population is simmering for months now.

“Our aim is to see clearer view of Russia on situation in Serbia” Zoran Djindjic told journalists on Saturday, in front of the City Hall.

At the same time, highest officials of the Serbian government continue to label all the opposition parties, their sympathisers and opponents of the regime in general as “terrorists”, “neo- fascists” and “prolonged arm of NATO aggression”.

Since March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, was involved in 11 weeks of destructive air raids against Serbia because of its repressive politics against the ethnic Albanian minority in the Kosovo province.

Growing discontent in the country is described as “work of NATO spies, the opposition”.

Analysts of Serb-Russian relations are skeptical that Moscow can bring solutions to the Serbian crisis. Vladimir Veres, an expert of the Institute of Social Sciences, says that “one has to remember that Russia always voted for all the international sanctions against Yugoslavia in the United Nations and agreed with all the international moves against Serbia”.

“Any support given publicly to anyone here – be it government or the opposition – was only verbal in the past years” he adds.

It included verbal protests against the NATO air campaign, he says.

“In general, Russia is not willing to endanger its relations with the West because of Serbia. And broader Serbian public is made believe that it is willing, both by the government and the opposition,” says Branka Prpa, a Belgrade historian.

“In substance, Russia sometimes needs crisis in Serbia so that it can use it for its own purposes both abroad and home, to leave the impression of the big power”.

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