International Herald Tribune

Paris, Monday, November 30, 1998

Purge Makes Strongman Look Weak

in Yugoslavia

Associates of Milosevic's Wife Take Key Posts

By Jane Perlez New York Times Service

BELGRADE - In moves viewed here and by some in

Washington as signs of weakness rather than strength,

President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has conducted

an extraordinary purge of his innermost circle, dismissing

the leaders of the army, the air force and the intelligence

service, as well as one of his most trusted political

commissars.

Few are brave enough to say how or when Mr. Milosevic

will go. But many officials here and in Washington say that

the dismissals represent the beginning of the end.

The purge, conducted in the wake of Mr. Milosevic's

agreement Oct. 13 to pull troops out of Kosovo, culminated

last week with the dismissal of General Momcilo Perisic,

the long-serving army chief of staff and an architect of the

war in Bosnia.

In the last month, Mr. Milosevic has been seen by former

associates as increasingly insecure, even paranoid, as

Kosovo drifts from his control, the enfeebled economy gets

weaker and he bows to the demands of his politically

powerful wife, replacing his apparatchiks with hers.

''Deep in their minds they know that there will be social

unrest, and they want totally loyal people around them

when it happens,'' Bratislav Grubacic, the editor of an

English-language newsletter for diplomats and others in

Belgrade, said of Mr. Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana

Markovic. ''He is closing the areas where he doesn't feel

comfortable - people in the state apparatus who might

eventually become disloyal.''

A Washington official who has followed Yugoslavia for

more than a decade said: ''The regime is brittle. It will

crack. It will break.''

The dismissals have inspired open talk here of the

resemblance between the ruling court of Mr. Milosevic, his

wife and their two wealthy children, Marko and Marija, and

that of the Ceaucescu family in Romania, which was

dominated by a husband-and-wife team and collapsed in a

bloody downfall in 1989.

The fall of Mr. Milosevic would have important

consequences for the United States. Mr. Milosevic has been

treated by the Clinton administration as an important keeper

of the peace in Bosnia and as a negotiating partner over the

future of Kosovo, where the ethnic Albanian majority is

seeking independence.

Mr. Milosevic rules from behind closed doors, rarely

appearing in public and almost never granting interviews,

even to state news media, which he controls. There has

been no official explanation of the recent dismissals.

The purges began shortly after the departure from Belgrade

of the U.S. envoy, Richard Holbrooke, who persuaded Mr.

Milosevic to agree to international observers in Kosovo,

and were preceded by the closing of independent

newspapers and academic dismissals at Belgrade

University.

The removal of General Perisic on Tuesday was perhaps the

least surprising. He publicly criticized Mr. Milosevic last

month for allowing what is left of Yugoslavia to become a

pariah state. Yugoslavia now consists of two republics:

Serbia and Montenegro.

General Perisic, who led the Yugoslav National Army

during the atrocities in Bosnia, was reported to have

opposed the use of his soldiers against ethnic Albanian

civilians in Kosovo during the summer offensive there. His

skepticism apparently infuriated Ms. Markovic.

The agreement on Kosovo between Yugoslavia and NATO

was signed by General Perisic, thus forcing Mr. Milosevic

to wait a decent interval before getting rid of him. What

was surprising was General Perisic's decision to fight back.

On Thursday night the general taunted Mr. Milosevic with a

statement saying he had been dismissed illegally and hinting

that he was prepared to lead Yugoslavia down a different

path.

''I was replaced without consultations, in an inadequate and

illegal way,'' the general said in a statement issued through

an independent news agency. ''This establishment does not

like officials with high personal integrity who use their own

heads. I am still at the disposal of the army, the people and

the state.''

General Perisic, a native of Montenegro, is reported to have

the backing of that republic's president, Milo Djukanovic, a

former Milosevic ally who has turned against the Yugoslav

president and has won U.S. support for his stand.

Some opponents of Mr. Milosevic, who has thrived

throughout his 11-year rule by fomenting crises, say they

fear that with Kosovo effectively now policed by the West

and its ethnic Albanian guerrillas lying low in winter

snows, the president will use the lull to provoke a

confrontation with Montenegro.

General Perisic was replaced by General Dragoljub

Ojdanic, a member of Miss Markovic's political party who

was commander of one of the army corps most active in the

savage 1991 fight to wrest the city of Vukovar from

Croatians, officials said.

The first senior official to be removed was Jovica Stanisic,

the head of state security services, whom the West

considers a clever intelligence officer. Mr. Stanisic, who

knows all the dirty secrets of Mr. Milosevic's rule, was

replaced by a senior police patrol officer, Rade Markovic, a

loyalist of Miss Markovic's and a member of her party,

known as the Yugoslav Left. Rade Markovic is not related

to Miss Markovic.

Along with Mr. Stanisic, a dozen top operational officers of

the security service were forced into retirement or removed,

a move that may undermine Mr. Milosevic in the longer

term, officials said.

Mr. Milosevic next dismissed Milorad Vucelic, the deputy

leader of Mr. Milosevic's Socialist Party, who served as the

president's political disciplinarian.

To complete the list, the head of the air force, General

Ljubisa Velickovic, who protested Mr. Milosevic's

agreement to allow NATO surveillance flights over

Kosovo, was also removed.

Mr. Milosevic has carried out purges before, but never to

this extent, and he has never so obviously filled vacancies

with loyalists of his wife.This round is also different

because it comes when there is no obvious danger to Mr.

Milosevic.

And for the first time even courtiers of the regime speak of

it in scathing terms.

Slavko Curuvija, editor in chief of two publications that

were closed down by the government last month, was until

recently a confidant of Miss Markovic.

In an interview, he described how he went to see the

president's wife in October to offer a few pessimistic

predictions. ''In the next year or next two years they will

lose power,'' Mr. Curuvija said. ''They are making a private

regime in which nobody who is not a close friend or not a

bodyguard has important positions in the government.''

He said his meeting with Miss Markovic ended abruptly. ''I

told her that everything her husband had done was

dramatically bad and that he had to do several things to save

Serbia,'' he said. ''I said: 'If you don't stop what's going on,

the end will be bloody,' and that many people will be killed

and maybe some will be hanged on the Terazije,'' a central

square in Belgrade.

A critical factor governing how long the government will

survive is the economy. Battered by sanctions and bans on

loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary

Fund, it continues to decline.

So far Mr. Milosevic has managed to manipulate the

currency so that he can pay about three-quarters of the

annual state pensions due and keep the police and army

paid. With help from Russia, which provides natural gas

even though Yugoslavia is late in its payments, and with

deals like a recent oil purchase from Libya, Mr. Milosevic

is able to provide energy for the long-suffering people.