The New York Times

Monday, January 24, 2000

Despite U.S. Heat on Belgrade, Radio Services Cut Broadcasts

By STEVEN ERLANGER

BELGRADE, Serbia, Jan. 21 -- While the Clinton administration intensifies its efforts to oust President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia through increased support for the Serbian opposition and independent media, both Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America have recently curtailed their Serbian-language transmissions.

The cuts in broadcasting to Serbia came as a surprise to a senior State Department official closely involved in Balkan policy, who said he would look into the matter. The administration has just doubled its financial support for Serbian "democratization," including direct and indirect aid to the opposition and to the independent media, to $25 million this fiscal year.

The administration has also tried to create a "ring around Serbia" of international broadcasting, including aid and new transmitters for stations in Bosnia and Montenegro. Washington is doing so in an effort to get "the truth" into Mr. Milosevic's authoritarian Serbia, officials say, where news is still dominated by state broadcasting, and to try to help the opposition overthrow Mr. Milosevic, through an uprising or elections.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has told senior aides that one of her goals, before leaving office a year from now, is to see Mr. Milosevic out of office.

The directors of Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America acknowledged the cuts, which reduced the daily Serbian transmissions to roughly what they were before NATO's air war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo began late last March.

Both men, Thomas A. Dine, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, and Sanford Ungar, director of Voice of America in Washington, emphasized that they had to make difficult choices within their existing budgets, which Congress did not increase.

During the war, both services increased their broadcasting in Serbian and Albanian, to serve listeners and Kosovo refugees, especially during a period of wartime press censorship in Serbia. But with the war over, the refugees returned and the independent radio station B92, now called B2-92, operating again, Mr. Dine and Mr. Ungar decided that they could use their tightened budgets more usefully in other areas.

Radio Free Europe, which had broadcast news in Serbian from midnight until 2 a.m. local time, but extended its news transmissions until 5 a.m., cut back on Jan. 2 by two and a half hours, going off the air at 2 a.m. -- the other day in the middle of a sentence -- and starting up again at 4:30.

Mr. Dine points out that R.F.E. continues to broadcast 10 hours and 40 minutes a day in Serbian. "We asked for another $750,000 in the fiscal year 2000 so we could keep up thirteen and a half hours a day, but we didn't get it," Mr. Dine said.

There was some research indicating that listeners dropped off in the early hours, Mr. Dine said, and the cost of transmission is high. "I think we're still fulfilling our mission," he said, and there are other needs: concentration on the Internet and covering cost of living increases from the existing budget.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, to which both radio services report, is a presidentially appointed independent commission now formally independent of the State Department and the United States Information Agency. The secretary of state is an ex-officio board member.

As for Congress, Mr. Dine said: "The professional staff and the members in Congress knew what they were giving us and what the consequences would be. No one said, 'Cut,' but a nonanswer means they don't want the heat. It's diametrically opposed to all the cheerleading."

The Voice of America's Mr. Ungar said similarly, "We have an incredibly tight budget for the fiscal year 2000."

"Congress gave us the same amount as last year," he added, and told the station to absorb a cost of living increase of 4.8 percent, "so it was a cut."

The V.O.A. still broadcasts two and a half hours of news a day in Serbian, cutting the extra 15 minutes of news the station added in March, when the bombing war began. Broadcasting in Albanian, which went up to three and a half hours a day to serve Kosovar refugees driven out of the province by the Serbs, has now been cut back to one hour and 45 minutes a day, Mr. Ungar said. He noted that both services include a 30-minute radio and television simulcast Monday through Friday.

But Mr. Unger added that with continuing money problems and the desire to keep broadcasting in 53 languages, he was looking for other trims, cutting hours and frequencies. As for the Serbian service, he said, "we've just cut the 15 minutes we added in March, but on further re-examination, we may trim it more."

Another broadcasting official said: "This ought to put some egg on some faces. Symbolically, this is foolish. Washington loves to mandate stuff and then not fund it."