The New York Times

Friday, May 28, 1999

Wanted: The Five Serbs Charged With War Crimes

By CARLOTTA GALL

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Here are thumbnail sketches of the five Yugoslav officials charged Thursday by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, with crimes against humanity:

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, 58, president of Yugoslavia since 1997, has effectively been the strongman of Belgrade since 1987. Then the Communist Party chief, he staged a coup over his former mentor in the party, Ivan Stambolic, and was subsequently elected Serbian president for two terms, 1989 to 1997. As president of rump Yugoslavia, elected by members of the federal Parliament, he is also supreme commander of the Yugoslav army. A Communist Party apparatchik all his life and a lawyer by training, he served as general manager of Tehnogas, a gas pipeline manufacturing company, and general manager of Yugoslavia's largest bank, Beobanka. A Serb nationalist, he rose to power over the issue of Kosovo, and has been largely blamed for the wars that have torn Yugoslavia apart since 1991.

MILAN MILUTINOVIC, 57, president of Serbia since December 1997. He is a trusted aide and longtime friend of Milosevic; the two were law students together at Belgrade University. Born in Belgrade, Milutinovic was proposed for the post of Serbian president by Milosevic, and ran as the candidate for his Socialist Party. He served as Yugoslav foreign minister from 1995 to 1997, and was for five years Yugoslav ambassador to Greece. He also served as a member of the federal Parliament and Serbian minister of education. He has emerged as Milosevic's main negotiator and interlocutor with the outside world, was present at Dayton to negotiate the end to the Bosnian war, and led the Serb delegation to peace talks on Kosovo in Rambouillet, France, last February. While indisputably loyal, he has some weight as a politician in his own right.

NIKOLA SAINOVIC, 51, Yugoslav deputy prime minister with special responsibility for Kosovo for the last year, and a close aide to Milosevic. Born in Bor, a large copper-mining center in southeastern Serbia, he is a technical engineer by training. He was a provincial Communist Party chief from 1978 to 1982, then minister for mining. Since 1991 he has filled top level posts in the Serbian government and the federal government, including president of the Serbian government in 1993. In 1994 he became vice president of the federal government. Since last year he has had special responsibility for Kosovo, and spent many weeks in the province, where he was the key liaison with the international observers. A trusted lieutenant of Milosevic's, he took part in the peace talks at Rambouillet, France. Reportedly, foreign intelligence intercepted a telephone call between Sainovic and the Serb chief of police in Kosovo, Gen. Sreten Lukic, allegedly discussing how to cover up the evidence of the killings of ethnic Albanian

civilians at the village of Racak in January.

VLAJKO STOJILJKOVIC, 62, Serbia's minister of internal affairs, comes from Pozarevac, Milosevic's home town. A career policeman, he became police chief in Pozarevac, and later general manager of an agricultural complex of factories in Pozarevac. He headed Yugoslavia's Chamber of Commerce until April 1997, when he was appointed minister of internal affairs. A trusted aide to Milosevic, as minister of internal affairs he commands Yugoslavia's enormous police force, including the secret police and commando units, all of which have served extensively in Kosovo, often performing clean-up operations in the wake of the army.

COL. GEN. DRAGOLJUB OJDANIC, 57, chief of staff of the Yugoslav army, was born in the village of Ravni, near Serbia's border with Bosnia. He trained at the Military Academy for Ground Forces in Belgrade, and later taught as a professor there. He served as a commander of a battalion and an infantry brigade, and when the war broke out in Bosnia was commander of the Uzice Corps, which had reservists in particular around Mostar. He commanded the corps throughout the war. At the end of the war, he was appointed chief of staff and then commander of the first army, based in Belgrade. Much decorated, he is said to be close to the Yugoslav Left, the party of Mirjana Markovic, the wife of Milosevic.