POLITICS-US/YUGOSLAVIA: Washington Cheers from Sidelines

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 2000 (IPS) - Top US politicians, from President Bill Clinton downward, are hailing events in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and redoubling their calls on President Slobodan Milosevic to recognise his election defeat and step down.

Thursday’s storming by thousands of protestors of the Yugoslav Parliament building and the state television headquarters was greeted here with barely-disguised glee on the part of US officials and independent analysts, most of whom believe that Milosevic’s final ouster is only days, if not just hours, away.

“(Milosevic) has no more power left,” said Ivo Daalder, a Balkans specialist at the independent Brookings Institution and a former National Security Council aide under Clinton. “He’s just a lonely, lonely man at the top,” he told Cable News Network (CNN).

The critical moment appears to have come Wednesday when the Yugoslav police confronted striking miners at the Kolubara coal mine in central Serbia. When demonstrators against Milosevic turned up by the thousands at the site, the police backed down.

A similar sequence of events took place in Belgrade Thursday when the police put up only token resistance to opposition’s takeover of government buildings amid demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets demanding that Milosevic step down.

“It seems that the police are no longer loyal to him,” said Stojan Cerovic, a columnist for the Belgrade newspaper Vreme, who is currently at the US Institute of Peace (USIP). “I believe the army is even less loyal to him.”

“The senior leadership of the army is not about to shoot at its own people,” noted Daalder, who added that the rank and file are made up of conscripts.

At the White House, Clinton spoke in favour of the protests. “The people are trying to get their country back,” he said, adding, “the opposition candidate obviously won the election.” At the same time, Clinton ruled out any US military intervention.

Both major-party presidential candidates urged Milosevic to step down immediately. “The world will be a better place when he hears the word of his people and leaves his office,” said Texas Gov. George Bush, the Republican candidate, while his Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore declared, “It is time for Milosevic to go.”

“So long as Milosevic remains in power, he remains a continued threat to peace and stability in the region,” Gore added. “His rule must end.”

In his remarks, Clinton also stressed that he wanted to avoid saying or doing anything that would bolster Milosevic under the current situation.

The US role in leading NATO in its 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia over Kosovo angered many Serbs, including the man who defeated Milosevic in last week’s elections, Vojislav Kostunica. As a result, Washington’s support for the opposition has been kept low key until now for fear that it would bolster Milosevic’s claims to be defending his country against US intervention.

Indeed, throughout the election campaign, Milosevic and his supporters tried to paint the opposition as stooges of Washington and “NATO aggressors.” “This is not an election so much as a referendum, a decision on being an independent country or a colony,” declared Ljubisa Ristic, the head of the Yugoslav United Left party, one of a coalition of parties which backed Milosevic.

During the election campaign, Kostunica himself repeatedly stressed that he never accepted US political support and castigated Washington for big-power arrogance. He has also insisted that, as president, he would not turn over Milosevic or his top aides to the Hague tribunal on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia which he considers “an instrument of American policy and not of international law.”

Washington nonetheless clearly vastly prefers Kostunica and sees his statements as a political necessity given Serb disillusionment with the United States and the West.

Indeed, Washington gave far more than moral or rhetorical support to the opposition during the election. It provided some 25 million dollars to the political opposition, including newspapers, political parties, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and get-out-the-vote campaigns in just the past year. Much of the aid was co-ordinated with similar assistance from Washington’s European allies.

Such assistance, which was supplied covertly to foreign governments or opposition forces by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War, came in the form of printing presses, computers, and other office equipment, training of political activists, and funding for polling and political consultants. The administration has asked Congress to approve another 50 million dollars for a similar programme next year.

No covert aid from Washington – through the CIA or some other agency – has yet come to light.

While there is no indication that Kostunica received any direct aid, one clear beneficiary was Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party, who has acted as a spokesman for the opposition forces behind Kostunica’s candidacy.

“US political support did make a difference,” said Cerovic who added that he wished that Washington had begun providing such assistance much earlier.

Although Washington was never an enthusiastic backer of Milosevic, it saw him through most of the 1990s as a partner in establishing stability in the former Yugoslavia. Even in the wake of the war over Bosnia, for which his allies were indicted as war criminals, Washington treated him as a reliable guarantor of the Dayton Accords.

It was not until 1997 that Washington began providing political assistance to Serbia’s fractious opposition, but total aid that year came to only 400,000 dollars. It increased that amount to 2 million dollars in 1998 as the crisis in Kosovo heated up, and then to 10 million dollars last year.

As in the Kosovo war, which ended with Milosevic accepting a western-backed peace plan presented to him by Russia, Washington is now hoping that Moscow will persuade Milosevic to step down, if he does not decide to do so on his own in the next days, according to officials here.

To date, Russian President Vladimir Putin has supported Milosevic’s position that a second round of elections should be held in Yugoslavia, but, after Thursday’s events in Belgrade, US officials believe Putin may align himself with western demands that the Serb leader recognise Kostunica’s election.