[ALBSA-Info] Milosevic Rejects Arrest Warrant

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Milosevic Rejects Arrest Warrant

By ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC

  
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Rejecting a warrant, Slobodan Milosevic told 
police trying to bring him to justice that he would rather die than surrender 
Saturday, after loyalists guarding the former president prevented his arrest 
by spraying gunfire at riot squads storming his villa. 

As the standoff continued more than 13 hours after the raid, an Interior 
Ministry source told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that 
Milosevic said he did not ``recognize these police and these authorities, all 
of them being NATO servants.'' 

The former president's personal guards fired at police with automatic weapons 
and pistols, preventing them from entering Milosevic's house and arresting 
him. Three people, including two policemen, were injured in the police raid. 

Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic, in effect Serbia's police chief, 
said the assault was halted out of fear there would be bloodshed. But other 
officials suggested the lull was temporary. 

``Police have a task (to arrest Milosevic) today,'' said Zoran Zivkovic, the 
interior minister of Yugoslavia, which links Serbia and much smaller 
Montenegro. Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic also said that ``we expect 
that everything will be resolved during the day.'' 

Still, Milosevic declared he will not go peacefully. In a meeting with the 
police official conducting the operation at the scene, Milosevic said ``he 
won't go to jail alive,'' Mihajlovic told reporters. 

Milosevic is wanted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, 
Netherlands, for alleged involvement in atrocities against Kosovo's ethnic 
Albanian majority. But Mihajlovic said the purpose of the attempted arrest 
was not to turn Milosevic over to the tribunal, ``but to hand him over to an 
investigative judge, under domestic laws.'' 

The police action came on the very day the U.S. Congress had set as a 
deadline for Yugoslavia to begin cooperating with the U.N. war crimes 
tribunal. But Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic said the deadline was not 
a factor, adding ``conditioning of that kind is unacceptable for a sovereign 
country.'' 

Washington had threatened Belgrade with a suspension of $100 million in 
economic aid if it did not comply. 

Mihajlovic said some of those guarding the former president were drunk and 
that one bodyguard and about 20 heavily armed Milosevic loyalists were holed 
up inside the house. 

``Either he will face the judge on his own, or we will do it by force,'' he 
declared, after the police push on the villa. ``We will not be stopped by a 
bunch of drunkards who have bloodied their hands guarding their beloved 
leader.'' 

The raid on the Milosevic villa revealed a potentially dangerous split 
between police loyal to the pro-democracy authorities of Serbia, the main 
Yugoslav republic, and the federal army, which still has officers who 
apparently back Milosevic 

Just hours before police stormed the residence, the head of the army unit 
officially guarding it handed over the keys of the main gate of the compound 
to members of Milosevic's private bodyguard, Djindjic said. Mihajlovic 
condemned ``Yugoslav army obstruction,'' which he said prevented an inquiry 
into the incident. 

The army later issued a statement denying it had in any way obstructed the 
arrest. But the Serbian government accused ``individual'' generals of 
``systematically'' hindering the work of the police. 

Mihajlovic said criminal charges were filed against Milosevic on Friday. 
Police official Miodrag Vukovic said the charges were abuse of power and 
corruption that cost the state close to $100 million. The maximum prison term 
on conviction of those charges is five years, he said. 

The raid began with masked special police, some in plain clothes, advancing 
across the vast yard and firing stun grenades toward the villa in the Dedinje 
district. Officers met with some resistance in the villa yard. 

``We won't let them inside. We won't let them arrest him,'' Milosevic aide 
Zivorad Igic told AP by mobile phone before police hauled him away. Milosevic 
loyalists initially driven off by police reappeared Saturday. About 250 of 
them chanted, ``Slobo, Slobo.'' 

Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic, and their daughter Marija were believed 
to be inside the villa with the former president. 

The police action followed conflicting reports about whether Milosevic was in 
custody. At one point, Milosevic appeared outside his home, apparently to 
reassure supporters he had not been arrested. 

``I'm just drinking coffee with my comrades and I'm very well,'' he told 
local television. 

The government of President Vojislav Kostunica has been split over whether to 
surrender the former president. Many officials insist Milosevic must be tried 
at home for ruining the country before he is handed over to the tribunal to 
face war crimes charges. 

He has been investigated for corruption, embezzlement and allegedly ordering 
the assassinations of political opponents. 

Laws bar extradition of Yugoslav nationals to a foreign country, but 
Parliament is reportedly preparing a bill that may allow Milosevic to be 
extradited. 

Since his ouster from power last fall, Milosevic has lived under police 
surveillance in his villa. 

The tile-roof villa was built for former Yugoslav communist dictator Josip 
Broz Tito in 1978, two years before he died. It is said to contain secret 
underground passages, as well as underground vaults containing jewelry - 
gifts to Tito during his 36-year rule. 

Milosevic rose to power in Yugoslavia during the waning years of communist 
power in Europe. In 1991, he triggered the bloody breakup of the former 
Yugoslavia, sending his army in losing wars against the pro-independence 
republics of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. 

His brutal attempts to put down an ethnic Albanian rebellion in Serbia's 
province of Kosovo led to NATO airstrikes that ultimately pushed his forces 
out of the province in 1999. 

When Milosevic refused to accept electoral defeat in October, opposition 
supporters rioted. He conceded defeat Oct. 6, but remained politically 
active.