Yugoslavia: Mass Bedlam in Belgrade

By JAMES L. GRAFF/BELGRADE

Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic, has spent months poised on the brink of conflict with neighboring Croatia on behalf of the ethnic Serbs living there. But last week, the most harrowing for Yugoslavia since the end of World War II, Serbia was fighting battles entirely within its own borders. In a scenario that seems to have become a rite of passage in the new Europe, the people of the republic were pitted against an autocratic regime, Serbia's communist government. The showdown came in the capital, Belgrade, where anticommunist demonstrations paralyzed the city center for three tense days and nights after a weekend of violence.

The chief political casualties from the week's ferment were Yugoslavia's two senior Serbs. On Friday, Borisav Jovic, the Serbian leader of Yugoslavia's eight-man presidency, resigned after a majority of his colleagues from the country's five other republics rejected an army proposal to declare a national state of emergency. The next day, two more presidency members who supported Jovic followed suit. Voicing fears that the country was headed inexorably toward civil war, Jovic said he was "not ready to go along with such decisions that are leading to the breakup of the country." For his part, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic found his grip on power seriously weakened by the turmoil. With the prospect that the army might yet impose a crackdown, Yugoslavia was left teetering between hope and fear.

The fulcrum of uncertainty was Milosevic, 49, who rose to power in 1986 on a populist wave of Serbian nationalism and was overwhelmingly confirmed as president -- under the banner of the renamed Socialist Party of Serbia -- in . elections last December. In his efforts to fuel nationalist passions and to silence dissent, Milosevic exercised ironclad control over Serbia's state- owned media, which in turn waged a war of words against secessionist-minded Croatians and Slovenes and the equally nationalistic but more democratic Serbian opposition. On March 9 some 100,000 people crowded into Belgrade's Republic Square to register their opposition.

A pitched battle broke out when Serbian riot police, firing rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, charged the ralliers. Many of the protesters fought back with trash cans, paving blocks ripped from the sidewalks and even furniture from open-air cafes. As the crowd swarmed toward the Serbian parliament building, a 17-year-old boy, Branivoje Milinovic, was killed by police gunfire; more than 100 other people were injured, and a policeman later died of head wounds. The federal army, commanded by a largely Serbian officer corps, deployed tanks and armored personnel carriers at Serbia's request, in what Croatian prime minister Josip Manolic called "an act against the constitution."

Early last week thousands of students gathered in protest on Terazije square, one of Belgrade's main thoroughfares. They demanded the resignation of state-controlled media managers and the Serbian minister of police, as well as the release of the more than 600 demonstrators who had been detained.

As the protests persisted, Milosevic began parceling out concessions. His appointees at the head of RadioTelevision Belgrade resigned. Vuk Draskovic, leader of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, was released after spending three days in prison. Serbian minister of police Radmilo Bogdanovic, held responsible by the opposition for police violence, offered his resignation.

But Milosevic and his regime are clearly not not going to bow out with a whimper. In three tense marathon sessions of the collective federal presidency (made up of representatives of all six republics and the two Serbian provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo), Jovic, backed by the army chief of staff, had pressed for a military crackdown. "Milosevic is a fighting man," said Milovan Djilas, a dissident communist who was jailed repeatedly by Marshal Josip Broz Tito in the 1950s and '60s. "He won't go for a fundamental change of policy."

Many Serbs, though hurt by a depression that saw the republic's industrial production drop 35% last year, back Milosevic because they fear the prospect $ of a painful switch to a market-oriented economy. Strong support also comes from the federal army, whose officers enjoy privileges that would probably be jettisoned by a liberal Serbian government.

It may not be enough, however, to wrest the initiative back from the anticommunist movement. "Milosevic's castle has been destroyed," said Desimir Tosic, vice president of the opposition Democrats. "He could make a desperate move to stay in power, but it won't be the same power he held in the past."

Such questions are moot, however, if the army decides to take matters into its own hands. The spate of presidential resignations last week left Yugoslavia in confusion over just what civilian authority ultimately commands the military. If the answer turns out to be Milosevic and the army leaders, the country could sink into an even grimmer cycle of violence.