Fear in Milosevic's bunker
by Christina Lamb
WITHIN hours of Slobodan Milosevic's unexpected appearance on a Houston television station last week, Downing Street had summoned a panel of pyschologists to study the video. Their verdict that the Yugoslav dictator is "losing his grip" was seized upon as evidence that airstrikes alone may succeed in resolving the Kosovo crisis.
"We know he is spending more and more time underground in his bunker," claimed a senior British official at the meeting of Nato leaders in Washington. "He's getting lots of calculations wrong and we are aware of more and more people who want to get rid of him." Another went as far as to say he might cave in to Nato demands within a month rather than risk losing power in a coup.
Despite frustration with the slow progress in wearing down the Milosevic military machine, alliance intelligence reports suggest that senior figures in the regime are losing patience with their president's determination to turn them into a pariah state.
But the image of Milosevic on the run may be just wishful thinking. Since the bombing started five weeks ago, the Yugoslav president has made only a handful of public appearances including the unlikely television interview with a Texan academic.
Unlike other despots, the 57-year-old does not flaunt medals, collect titles or indulge in flashy displays of power. Foreign Office officials are divided as to whether this, together with his reclusiveness, is an attempt to cultivate an aura of mystery, or a sign that he is fearful to go out in public. Whatever the reasons for his reluctance to leave his lair, there is no doubt that Nato's attentions are increasingly centred on dislodging him.
Nato officials deny that Wednesday night's bombing of 15 Uzicka Street, the colonnaded white villa that he moved into two years ago, was an assassination attempt. Doug Henderson, the armed forces minister, insisted: "The house was being used as a command-and-control facility and therefore was part of the military machine and a military target." But the bombing clearly signalled Nato's frustration with a man whose facelessness has made him one of the West's most slippery enemies.
He is not an easy target. He rarely sets foot in the White Palace, the former royal residence that is his other home. He and his family stay at different safe houses or military bunkers every night. Those familiar with Belgrade politics believe that there is little risk of him being dislodged by internal opposition or a revolt within his military. Political opposition is weak.
Milosevic meets every morning with his war council, which includes General Dragoljub Ojdanic, chief of the armed forces, and General Milorad Obradovic, head of the Yugoslav army in Montenegro; Dragan Tomic, the speaker of the Serbian parliament; Mirko Marjanovic, the Serbian prime minister; and Nicolas Sinovic, deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia and party strategist, as well as senior economic advisers.
How much he takes their advice is another matter. "Slobodan Milosevic is the state," said a Foreign Office official. "There is no question of anyone bringing him bad news, as he who sticks his neck out is liable to have it lopped off."
Any doubts about that were silenced two weeks ago when Slavko Curuvija, the owner of Denevni Telegraf, a Belgrade newspaper, and a former member of the Milosevic circle, was brutally murdered by two masked gunmen after criticising the president in print.
The war council essentially consists of yes men, who not only fear to speak out but have been given various economic incentives to stay loyal. Tomic, for example, is head of Jugopetrol, the state oil refinery and distributor. Marjanovic runs Tehnogas and Progres, importers of gas from Russia. Others have been given steelworks, a state chain of foodstores, or chemical plants.
The most powerful people of all in Belgrade are the president's immediate family. The most feared is his 25-year-old son Marko, a playboy who terrorises his hometown of Pozarevac with a gang of thugs with identi-kit bleached hair, dark glasses and black leather jackets. Marko owns the country's largest disco and holds the lucrative monopoly on the import of cigarettes. He thinks nothing of ordering military airfields closed so that he can drive - and often crash - his fast cars.
Equally influential is Milosevic's 34-year-old daughter, Marija, who runs her own radio and television station. Divorced and described as having "a voracious sexual appetite", she has gone through a series of boyfriends. Her current beau, Rade Markovic, has just been appointed head of the secret police.
The real power behind the throne is the president's wife, Mira, a communist known as the Red Witch. "He is faithful to no one except his wife, once a person has outlived their usefulness," says Slavoljub Djukic, Milosevic's biographer. Mira, the daughter of two wartime partisans and niece of one of Serbia's leading politicians, has always seen power as her destiny and is far more ideological than her husband. A BBC documentary last night revealed how she sends him into the kitchen to make sandwiches when politicians visit, and that he phones her nine times a day, calling her "my little pussycat".
Nato leaders now believe that Milosevic is becoming careless. "He's been getting angrier and angrier to the extent that we now know where his command and control posts are," claimed one official. Angry or not, Milosevic may well feel he can sit things out in a country that is united in opposition to airstrikes even if it has little love for him personally.
So far, even the destruction of the country's oil-refining and distribution capacity is not having a major effect. There is petrol rationing and some food shortages - but Yugoslavs are used to that.
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