Protesters Seize Yugoslav Parliament

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  In what appears to be the final and fatal blow to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s regime, angry protesters seized control Thursday of the federal parliament building and state-run television station here as police fled and soldiers joined celebrations in the street.

Serbian police, once fiercely loyal to Milosevic, offered only scattered resistance as hundreds of thousands of protesters joined in the most serious attack on Milosevic’s regime since he took power 13 years ago.

After state-run television fell under opposition control, Vojislav Kostunica, a soft-spoken former law professor who is the unlikely leader of Yugoslavia’s stunning uprising, appeared on the air to claim the presidency.

“What we are doing today is making history,” Kostunica told several hundred thousand supporters in an evening speech from the balcony of City Hall, across a square from the federal parliament building. “We call on the military and police to do everything to ensure a peaceful transition of power.”

Milosevic’s whereabouts were not known in the early morning hours today. Half a dozen lights were on at the White Palace, his official residence in Belgrade, but police officers normally on guard outside were not present. Only one officer was outside Milosevic’s private residence nearby.

Opposition leaders said Milosevic and loyal troops had fled to a bunker in the village of Beljanica, about 25 miles west of the town of Bor near the Romanian border, though their assertion could not be independently verified.

Supporters of Kostunica stayed in the streets through the night to protect what they saw as a final victory for freedom and to repulse any effort by the regime to reassert power. The state-run Tanjug news service, which had gone over to the opposition, reported that two people were killed and 65 injured.

A few acts of revenge reportedly were carried out against Milosevic supporters. In the southern town of Leskovac, protesters looted and set fire to the house of a local leader of his Socialist Party, the independent Beta news agency reported. And witnesses to the takeover of the state television complex said its director and news editor were beaten.

Meanwhile, signs were everywhere that the props of Milosevic’s regime--the police, the army and the state-run media--were no longer under his complete control.

As protesters partied in the streets, some drunk and shooting handguns in celebration, police were nowhere to be seen.

“We’ve got promises and guarantees from the top of the military that there will be no military intervention,” Vladan Batic, leader of the Christian Democratic Party, a member of Kostunica’s alliance, said in an interview after meeting with other coalition partners in City Hall. “We were also in contact with Belgrade police headquarters, and they promised they will not intervene.”

Army generals reportedly were meeting in Belgrade, but there was no statement from them as of late Thursday.

Asked if the more ruthless Interior Ministry police also were backing the opposition, Batic replied: “I don’t know if that institution still exists. The regime does not have command and control over the police.”

Then he added, half-joking: “We’re expecting Milosevic has been arrested any minute.”

Just minutes after he was interviewed, Batic supervised the unloading of a truckload of Kalashnikov assault rifles, sniper rifles and other firearms that apparently had been seized from the police.

A video broadcast by an independent television station showed at least half a dozen soldiers smiling and chatting with jubilant protesters as they milled about in the street. One of the soldiers let a young woman wear his camouflaged helmet.

In the early hours today, five uniformed Serbian police appeared with opposition supporters at City Hall. They wore white strips of cloth over their badges of rank, seen here as a sign that their units are now allied with Kostunica.

In his address on state television, Kostunica promised what Serbia’s people have been waiting for during the past eight years: Crippling international economic sanctions would be lifted, at least according to officials Kostunica said he had spoken to in the French government Thursday night.

Other Western governments, including the U.S., aren’t likely to be so quick to declare an end to sanctions, at least not while the fate of Milosevic, who has been indicted on war crimes charges by an international tribunal in The Hague, is unclear.

Kostunica, a more moderate nationalist than many in Serbia, repeated in the interview his previous vow that he will not hand over Milosevic to the tribunal.

Nonetheless, numerous international leaders were quick Thursday to give their support to Yugoslavia’s opposition.

“The people of Serbia have spoken with their ballots,” President Clinton declared during a speech in Princeton, N.J. “They have spoken on the streets. I hope the hour is near when their voices will be heard and we can welcome them to democracy, to Europe, to the world’s community.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to several North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies about the Yugoslav government, news services quoted her spokesman, Richard Boucher, as saying.

“We are looking to, first of all, recognize the new government . . . second of all, do what we can to help consolidate and stabilize the situation, and third of all, get on with the work of lifting sanctions and starting to work with the new government to integrate it into the region and into Europe,” Boucher said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan echoed Clinton’s words and called on Milosevic to step down. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged Yugoslavia’s police and soldiers: “Don’t fire on your own people.”

And in Moscow, President Vladimir V. Putin, whose nation is a traditional ally of the Serbs, repeated a previous offer to mediate between Milosevic and the opposition. But he studiously avoided offering political asylum to Milosevic or repeating earlier Russian denunciations of “Western pressure” on the Yugoslav regime.

For Milosevic, loss of control over the state-run media was a crucial blow. It came so suddenly that more than 160 striking state television workers were fired Thursday morning, only to find themselves swept back into control of the station Thursday night.

The Tanjug news service, which once served as Milosevic’s mouthpiece, issued what for it was a stunning statement: Kostunica was “president-elect of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” The statement was signed “Journalists of Liberated Tanjug.”

The Politika newspaper and the tabloid Vecernje Novosti, two other mainstays of Milosevic’s propaganda machine, also declared themselves “liberated” Thursday night.

Hours before the main complex of Radio-Television Serbia fell, it broadcast its own commentary on the mounting rebellion against Milosevic: “At this moment, terror rules in Belgrade,” it said. “They are attacking everyone they see on the streets, and there is chaos.”

In a bizarre contrast to the historic upheaval in the streets--with its rifle shots, clouds of tear gas and the bang of stun grenades--the broadcaster also aired a taped orchestral performance by musicians in formal wear.

Then the screen went blank after pro-Kostunica demonstrators attacked the complex on Takovska Street, about 100 yards from the federal parliament building.

As dozens of riot police tried to disperse the protesters with repeated volleys of tear gas, a bulldozer brought in by demonstrators roared to life and headed for the police cordon at 4:15 p.m.

At least six people were injured in the police counterattack, one of them a protester who was bleeding from his head as comrades rushed him to a nearby ambulance on a makeshift stretcher.

The first violence Thursday erupted as Yugoslavia’s Constitutional Court President Milutin Srdic announced that the results of the disputed Sept. 24 presidential election had been canceled and a new vote should be held sometime before Milosevic’s mandate expires in July 2001.

Since the court is controlled by Milosevic loyalists, the opposition saw the decision as another attempt by Milosevic to hold on to power. Kostunica claims that he won the Sept. 24 vote outright, but the state-controlled Federal Electoral Commission insisted that no candidate won a majority and ordered a runoff vote for Sunday.

Several hundred thousand Kostunica supporters had converged on Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, many of them in hundreds of buses that arrived from towns and cities across Serbia. The opposition called on supporters to attend a peaceful rally at which Kostunica would repeat his call for Milosevic to concede defeat.

A rally was supposed to begin in front of the federal parliament building around 3 p.m., but it was delayed as several thousand protesters chanted at a line of riot police. When a small group of demonstrators tried to break the police lines, officers fired tear gas and beat them back.

As a protester addressed the seething mob from parliament’s front steps around 3:30 p.m., and about 100 riot police stood barricaded inside the building, the crowd surged forward. The police responded by firing tear-gas canisters.

The demonstrators, mostly young men, attacked in waves, and several beat police, tore off their bulletproof vests and grabbed their radios and clubs.

One special police officer was captured and forced to address the crowd.

Most others fled, shrugging off their equipment as they ran. Swept up by their own rising fury, the protesters broke windows and threw tear gas into the parliament building around 4:15 p.m.

As smoke billowed from a small fire inside the building, the crowd entered and started to trash offices, grabbing phones, portraits of Milosevic and the Yugoslav flag as trophies of their uprising. A few even paused to urinate on the floor of the building they saw as a bastion of their oppression.

At the rear of the parliament, men set fire to three police cars and two police jeeps, sending a column of thick, black smoke into the sky.

At about 5 p.m., half a dozen armored police vehicles sped in a convoy through Belgrade.

One of the green, camouflaged vehicles had a machine gun mounted on top, and as the police inside made the three-fingered Serbian salute that once struck terror in enemies in former parts of Yugoslavia, the vehicles sprayed a noxious gas at the scattering protesters.

Watson reported from Budva, Yugoslavia, and Cirjakovic from Belgrade. Times staff writers Carol J. Williams in Berlin, Maura Reynolds in Moscow and Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.

* APPEAL TO AUTHORITY

Opposition leaders work to bring Milosevic’s long-loyal police force to their side. A13

* U.S. REACTION

Jubilant officials in Washington brushed aside the idea of helping Milosevic flee. A14