From Sympathy to Prison

There are many aspects which could be now clarified by those who had the real power and who knew what was really happening at that time. The time has now come for the political public in Serbia to find out why and for what (political job) was Milosevic elected, who made that decision behind the scenes, what was the role of the army and state security, and who wrote the roles. There are surely many other answers to these questions, more or less different than Stambolic's views.

Vreme carries reactions by various politicians who were active at that time. For this issue, we have selected excerpts from the account by Azem Vllasi, who was the leader of the former Communist League of Kosovo. Vreme's file, Ivan Stambolic: "A Key Witness" will be published October 2nd.

Sinister Role

Azem Vllasi says that everything Ivan Stambolic has written in his book about the sinister role of two generals - Nikola Ljubicic and Petar Gracanin - is true. According to the book, the two generals instrumentalized the tragedy at the barracks in Paracin, which happened shortly before the Eighth session.

"It was absolutely clear to me that the intention was to use this case for a political purpose," says Vllasi. "The media coverage of the tragedy was intended to animate the public in Yugoslavia against Albanians, since the victims were two Moslems from Bosnia, one Serb and one Croat. At that time, circles in Belgrade thought that other parts of Yugoslavia were indifferent towards Kosovo. The other goal was to win support from the army leadership for a new, tough political course in Serbia - the course of Slobodan Milosevic.

"At the Eighth session, I addressed the Committee several times only to reply to accusations against us in Kosovo, but even a more active role on my part could hardly have changed anything. Milosevic insisted on voting. Although Milosevic and I were at odds for some time before the session, he asked me during the pause to try to persuade the Kosovo members of the Central Committee of Serbia to vote to replace Dragisa Pavlovic. I told him that I disagreed and that I wouldn't do that. Nikola Ljubicic was secretely listening, as he always did, to our conversation. He said: "You people from the provinces are always obstructing." Committee members from both provinces abstained from the vote.

Ivan Stambolic has no words of understanding for the Yugoslav political leadership, saying that they all took sides with Milosevic and even obeyed his instructions. Stambolic said that Milosevic seemed more reliable than himself, whom most of the Committee members criticized for advocating the Serb cause. Azem Vllasi also has no nice words for the former Yugoslavia's state and party leadership.

"After the Eighth session, the next day perhaps, the Central Committee Presidency held a session and some of us demanded that the CK's agenda should include a report on the results of the Eighth session and a debate on it. Milosevic came out with a number of demogogic phrases, such as: 'The Eighth session was a decisive show-down with opportunism in the CK, it gave a new incentive to the unity, it gave a clearer expression to the people's opinions...' But no willingness was shown for a debate and I think that was fatal.

"It was later decided that every local branch of the League of Communists should take a stand on the Eighth session. We, the members of the Committee in Kosovo, decided not to do that. The session was not welcomed in Kosovo and the spirit of that session ruined the overall relations...

"When a propaganda campaign was launched about the alleged massive rapes of Serb women in Kosovo, we asked the federal police to make public the statistics about the rapes in all republics and provinces during the period of 1981-1987. It turned out that the lowest number of cases were reported in Kosovo and Montenegro, and furthermore that there was not a single case in Kosovo of an ethnic Albanian raping a Serb woman.

"We then asked the police to disclose the statistics on murder cases. Five cases of 'inter-ethnic' murders were reported in Kosovo - in two, Albanians have murdered Serbs and in three, Serbs killed Albanians. They were all classic cases of murder, without political backgrounds.

"One of the requests which the Kosovo leaders repeatedly voiced was the expulsion of Albanian immigrants. Officials kept mentioning the figure of 360,000 immigrants. But the police files showed that Yugoslavia had 813 Albanian immigrants, mostly in Kosovo."

Prepared by Roksanda Nincic