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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldsnow who wrote (17388)	2/3/2001 7:03:12 PM
From: George Papadopoulos	Respond to of 17770

Milosevic Says Yugoslav Election Tainted with Fear ROME (Reuters) - The Yugoslav elections which ousted Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) from power last October were tainted with fear and external pressure, the former president was quoted on Saturday as saying. ``Three things were at play in the recent elections: pressure, fear and corruption,'' La Stampa newspaper quoted Milosevic as saying in an interview. He said public opinion in Yugoslavia had been swayed by economic and military pressure from abroad. ``(There was) economic pressure in that we had been under sanctions for a decade and the message was that they would only be lifted if the government changed,'' he was quoted as saying. ``We were bombed every day for three months and the threats got worse before the election. It seemed that if there was no change of government, the bombing would start again.'' Milosevic, who was thrown from power in a popular uprising on October 5, said he did not blame the Yugoslav people for his loss and said he doubted the election result reflected their political desire. `In the last months fear conditioned public opinion...Fear became a political force to make things go the way of those who spread it,'' he said, accusing western Europe of wanting to take economic and political control of its eastern neighbors. ``Western countries, or rather their governments, supported me for as long as it was in their interest to have stability in the Balkans. When they thought it would be interesting to have instability, I lost their support,'' he was quoted as saying. Milosevic also criticized former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic's decision to surrender to the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague (news - web sites) and said she had turned from being a fierce nationalist to being a U.S. collaborator. The Hague tribunal also wants to try Milosevic as soon as possible for alleged war crimes by his forces during the Kosovo conflict in 1999 but the former president heaped scorn on the court, likening it to World War Two concentration camps. ``The court exists first and foremost to try Serbs. It is the same intimidation tactic the Nazis used first against the Jews and then the Slavs,'' he said, calling it an ``immoral and illegal institution.''