Encourage, reward milosevic's foes

Susan Blaustein is a freelance writer and a senior consultant for the International Crisis Group WASHINGTON — With Serbs and ethnic Albanians warily moving toward a peace agreement for the

ravaged province of Kosovo, it is critical not to forget the continuing repression of the Serbs by Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic. If his past behavior is any guide, Milosevic will

not accede to a peace agreement brokered by the international community without making his own people pay for it. Each time he has promised to lighten up on Kosovo, promises he has

invariably broken, he has cracked down on freedoms inside Serbia, crushing virtually all remnants of independent thought there. Last May, when fighting between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians was

in its third month, Milosevic promised U.S. envoy Richard C. Holbrooke that he would sit down with moderate Kosovar leaders. In return, the Yugoslav president was rewarded with the easing

of just-imposed Western sanctions. That same day, his telecommunications ministry all but silenced Serbia’s only independent broadcasting network when it rejected license applications for 36

of 39 radio and television stations and clapped bankrupting fees on the remaining three. (The stations granted affordable licenses belong to Milosevic’s wife, son and daughter.) Five days

later, Milosevic deposed the prime minister of Montenegro, Serbia’s sister republic, and installed in his place a longtime crony. Six days after that, the regime issued a decree forcing all

University of Belgrade professors to sign loyalty oaths, thereby shredding the once-prestigious university’s prized autonomy. One hundred fifty professors refused to sign and, as a result,

lost their jobs. After five more months of bloodshed, Milosevic again backed down last October under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s threat to bomb his soldiers’ positions. He

agreed to a cease-fire, troop withdrawal and the presence of unarmed international monitors in Kosovo. While the international community busied itself gearing up for humanitarian and

monitoring missions, Milosevic rammed a public-information law through his pliant Serbian parliament, enabling him to ban all foreign news, shut down all publications critical of his regime

and seize their assets. Now members of the Serb democratic opposition fear that their dictator, caught in an endgame with the international community over the presence of a NATO force in

Kosovo, will again punish his people for each concession he is forced to make. Moreover, they worry that the international community, as after the Dayton accords, will view Milosevic as a

guarantor of any new agreement and, in the name of stopping the killing in Kosovo, will turn a blind eye to whatever nonlethal oppression he may inflict at home. In particular, Serb

democrats anticipate continued attempts to silence what remains of the independent media, to shut down university departments, to co-opt opposition politicians and to expropriate assets

belonging to the regime’s few powerful critics. Indeed, on the eve of the opening of negotiations in Rambouillet, France, Serbian police seized a pharmaceuticals factory owned by former

Yugoslav president and opposition leader Milan Panic, thereby obliterating the regime’s debt to Panic’s company of more than $175 million. Opposition members also expect a showdown with Milo

Djukanovic, Montenegro’s reform-minded president who broke ranks with Milosevic more than two years ago and has since enraged and humiliated him by pressing for ever greater political and

economic autonomy for his republic. As Veran Matic, founder and director of the Assn. of Independent Electronic Media, or ANEM, Yugoslavia’s only independent broadcast media network, put it

during a recent visit to Washington, Montenegro is “the location of the next conflict which Milosevic will use to prolong his political life.” Given this history, nations eager to rebuild

Kosovo if there is a settlement must not divert resources earmarked for the rest of Yugoslavia. The humanitarian disaster in Kosovo was manufactured by Milosevic. If Yugoslav citizens are

ever to free themselves of their ruthless president peacefully, Western governments need to cultivate promising opposition leaders and to prepare the Yugoslav public for the next round of

elections. Then, perhaps, voters will feel they have a true choice and will be emboldened to throw Milosevic out. The United States must take the lead here. U.S. democracy-building

organizations must invest far more to protect and strengthen democratic institutions throughout Serbia. This can be achieved by providing training, technical support and professional

expertise to enterprising NGOs and by creating coalitions among the various opposition forces--students, the NGOs and the struggling, independent trade union, unpaid workers and pensioners,

politicians, opponents of the Kosovo war--whom thus far Milosevic has been successful in atomizing. Furthermore, U.S. diplomats and politicians should break their old habit of paying court

to Milosevic when in Belgrade and instead meet with democrats both in the capital and in the handful of opposition-held Serbian cities and towns. This would give the opposition the

recognition, credibility and support it deserves. Western assistance is also crucial if an independent media is to survive. Assistance should be given to ANEM, the independent

electronic-media network, to build at least one transmitter in Kosovo, which NATO ground troops must then protect. Not only would a transmitter promote Kosovars’ freedom of expression, but

it also could broadcast the still-banned Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and BBC programs in Serbia. Without free airwaves, the notion of free elections anywhere in Serbia is a pipe

dream, as a decade of Milosevic’s government-run, hatemongering media have painfully demonstrated. Additionally, Western governments and academic institutions should sponsor guest

lectureships enabling high-profile scholars to teach at Belgrade’s new Alternative Academic Educational Network, a parallel university opened this month. The school is currentlyoperating in

private homes and is staffed by dismissed University of Belgrade professors. Finally, whatever agreement emerges, Milosevic must not be rewarded for stopping a conflict he instigated. Until

he complies with all conditions, including turning over indicted war criminals and allowing the Hague’s International Criminal Tribunal investigators to do their work in Kosovo, the

sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia must remain. Lifting them would only create more breathing space for his bloodthirsty regime and enable him to portray himself at home as a national hero who

has once again hoodwinked the West.* MORE TO READ