Foes blasts Kostunica over Milosevic pals

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- In the most scathing attack yet on Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, a leader of the ruling democratic reform alliance accused him of harboring predecessor Slobodan Milosevic's henchmen in his presidential offices and hindering investigations of the previous regime's war crimes.

Zarko Korac, a Serbian deputy prime minister and head of the Social Democratic Union, said that at the same time Kostunica and his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) are castigating the 18-party alliance's other co-leaders for alleged corruption.

In an interview in the weekend edition of the Belgrade newspaper Danas, Korac said there are people who are frightened that Milosevic's extradition to the Hague war crimes tribunal and discovery of more mass graves filled with bodies of Kosovo Albanians around Serbia might endanger their own fate.

Milosevic was handed over to the tribunal in June to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. He also may be indicted for genocide in the 1992-95 ethnic war in Bosnia.

Those people "have gone into a decisive battle against the Serbian government which has resolutely grappled with crime. They have taken refuge in the Yugoslav president's offices and, it seems, in his person as well," Korac said. "If someone can say that the exhumation of mass graves and police investigation into who killed the Bitiqi brothers amount to 'currying favor with Washington' (as Kostunica charged at a recent press conference) then they think that the future of Serbia can be built on stopping graves in which, let's recall without pathos, there are women and children to be found," Korac fulminated.

The Bitiqis were three Americans of ethnic Albanian extraction discovered on top of a pile of dead Albanians at a mass grave in eastern Serbia after visiting their mother in Kosovo.

Korac said the DSS now stands alone vis-à-vis Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic's Democratic Party and 16 other members of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, an unchanged misnomer for the governing coalition.

He said the DSS should ask voters at the elections whether they want isolation to be reimposed on Serbia and a delay in the initiated reforms. The nation's honor will not be saved by keeping silent about the mass graves and not surrendering Milosevic, Korac asserted.

Observers see Korac's onslaught as moving the quarrel between Kostunica and the rest of DOS to near breaking point as the two sides jockey for poll position in the run-up to early general elections in which Kostunica hopes to take advantage of his current considerable lead in opinion polls.

Dr. K is toast. He is slowly but surely being compared to and implicated with the former regime in order to discredit him. I wouldn't be surprized if they "found" something on him. Clearly, Dr. K is the last and the latest target that has to be dealt with before the last nails are driven into Yugoserbia. And, by all accounts, and very appropriately, Zharko Korach started the process.

Dr. K better wake up or else he may find himself "guilty" of aiding and abetting suspected war criminals, with a one-way ticket to the Netherlands. The demonization of Dr. K has started! What is he waiting for?

All of a sudden he is not only a liability for re-imposition of sanctions, but actually hiding and aiding, and siding with, the former members of the former regime, in other words -- being equated with and to Miloshevich.

Can this get any more obvious?

No surprise.

Kostunica has been the interim stooge, the guy nobody likes, the usefull dupe of the rightful (!) leadership.
And so forth.
If he does not have a bundle stashed away someplace he is so utterly stupid as to deserve his fate.
If he does have that bundle stashed somewhere, he is just what some of us expected, mister-in-the middle,
not destined to be there at the end.
Not expecting to be there once the call came out to shift from nation to nice, cooperative, little, statelet.

The managers of a statelet can have bundles stashed away as well - just bet that Djindjic does not have his hiding away happily where he can get to it in a pinch.
If NATO et al allow him to get there.

He said the DSS should ask voters at the elections...

That's rather strange cause it's the DSS that is pushing for early elections, where mr. Korac is strongly opposed to it. Perhaps the fact that his "party" couldn't gain more than 0.2-0.3% of the votes (generous assumption)has got something to do with it.

But his statement shouldn't be easily disregarded simply cause he's a clown for everyone's amusement. Usually leaders of microparties in coalition voice opinions held by the major party and do their dirty work. That's why there are strange coalitions like former SPS-Yul in Serbia and DPS-SDP in Montenegro.

If he had any sense he would just retire to that Swiss bank account and be over with it. After all, his work is finished, he oversaw the transformation of Serbia into a NATO/NWO protectorate. What more is there for a patriot to do?

Perhaps the fact that his "party" couldn't gain more than 0.2-0.3% of the votes (generous assumption

Marko, you are right. That's what happens when you have a bad immitation you call Yugo-Serbian "democracy." In real democracies, coaliton partners are not microscopic parties, and coalitions are not made up of dozens of parties.

In fact, the parliamentary system is inherently unstable and, in the long run, undemocratic. The executive power rests in the hands of an unelected person -- head of government (the prime minister) instead of the head of state (a monarch or a president). Worse, coalition provides disproportionate power and infleunce to coaliton members who couldn't win an election alone and whose lack of popularity is incongruous with the level of infleunce they have in the government.

Besides, the parliamentary system collapsed in the former-former Yugoslavia (the Kingdom of), and required the king to abolish the parliament to establish direct rule. It seems that Yugoslavias (the former-former, the former and near-former) functioned much better under direct rule.

Realistically, Korach's party and Zharko himself would be a non-entity in any real instead of a make-believe country.

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