PURGE MAKES STRONGMAN LOOK WEAK IN YUGOSLAVIA

Associates of Milosevic's Wife Take Key Posts

NewYork Time/Herald Tribune, Monday, November 30, 1998

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 'M 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." 'Me 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 keepe

r of the peace in Bosnia and as a negotiating partner over the future of Kosovo, where the ethnic Albanian ma-jority 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 h

is soldiers against ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo during the summer offensive there. His scepticism 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 Gen~ eral Dragoljub Ojdanic, a member of Miss Markovic's political party who was commander of one of the army corps most active in the savage 19

91 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 Atlorad 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 remove

d. 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 yo

u 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.