International Herald Tribune, Wednesday 30 December 1998

The Washington Post

As the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic violates the truce in Kosovo more and more flagrantly, attention naturally turns to the dimming prospects for peace in that independence-minded province of Serbia. But just as dangerous to future prospects is what Mr. Milosevic is doing to his own people in Belgrade and throughout Serbia. His crackdown against free speech, free press and free academic study only confirms that he can never be a partner in promoting stability in Kosovo or anywhere else in the region.

Thanks to a fractured opposition, to his own strong-arm tactics and to the dominance of his political party in economic life, Mr. Milosevic already had managed to squelch most dissent in his increasingly impoverished nation. But in recent months he has moved to stifle any surviving independent voices. University professors are screened for loyalty; those who will not buckle under lose their jobs. The rebroadcast of Radio Free Europe programs has been banned. Any local newspaper or magazine that does not parrot the xenophobic government line is hit with huge fines and forced to close.

A case in point is Evropljanin, until recently Serbia's best-selling maga-zine. The magazine ran an article, co-signed by publisher Slavko Curuvija, that criticized Mr. Milosevic. That was enough. The regime imposed a prohibitive fine, seized the magazine's computers, even went after the furniture and other personal property of the magazine's editors. This crackdown began as U.S. diplomats were negotiating with Mr. Milosevic on the subject of Kosovo. ''Every time they deal with him, they abandon us to his mercy,'' notes Mr. Curuvija. ''He can't be a guarantor of peace, he can be only a generator of crisis.''

Finally there are signs that U.S. officials are recognizing this truth. President Bill Clinton, in a Dec. 3 letter to congressional leaders, said that ''the unacceptable actions and policies of Belgrade authorities in Kosovo and in the areas of human rights, democratization and war crimes investigations ... threaten to disrupt progress in implementation of Dayton and security in the region generally.'' Mr. Clinton is right. Now he needs to do much more to act on his conclusion by supporting democratization in Serbia.