Serbian Government Appears to Concede Loss in Belgrade Voting

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — The government of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic appeared to bow to international pressure and more than eight weeks of boisterous street demonstrations Tuesday with a decision by election officials to restore opposition victories in this prized capital.

Apparently reversing its annulment of Nov. 17 election results, the government has now recognized defeat in Serbia’s two largest cities, Belgrade and the southern hub of Nis. The move by Serbian electoral commissions grants opposition forces--who have staged the largest challenge to Milosevic’s decade-old rule--their principal demands.

But opposition leaders remained skeptical, and it was unclear if Tuesday’s breakthrough would defuse the crisis that has deepened Serbia’s international isolation and provoked serious splits within Milosevic’s ruling leftist coalition.

The electoral commissions are nominally independent but effectively controlled by the Serbian president.

“I don’t believe it,” said Zoran Djindjic, one of three leaders of the Zajedno (Together) opposition coalition. “This is another game to buy time.”

Djindjic, who would become Belgrade’s first non-Communist mayor since World War II if election results are restored, said the daily street rallies will continue until opposition victories are recognized in all 14 cities where election results were annulled by Milosevic-controlled courts. “Belgrade is only part of the package,” he said.

The decision to hand over the capital was announced by Radomir Lazarevic, the head of the Belgrade electoral commission, who underscored that the decision had not been made as a result of “blackmail” or “pressure.”

Lazarevic said the commission was overturning 45 decisions by local courts that Milosevic had engineered to give legal backing to his annulment of election results. The Nis commission followed suit hours later.

In theory, Milosevic’s Socialist Party has 48 hours to appeal the electoral commission decision in Belgrade, which serves as the Serbian capital and the capital of the rump Yugoslavia, which is made up of Serbia and tiny Montenegro.

Lazarevic noted that the results remained preliminary and that the City Council could not be seated until results are declared official after the appeal deadline expires.

The sudden retreat by authorities took observers by surprise. Until now, Milosevic had turned aside intense pressure at home, where tens of thousands of opponents rallied daily, and from Washington and European governments, and had offered only token concessions. The capital was seen as too important for Milosevic to give up.

The turnaround appeared to reflect divisions between hard-liners and moderates in Milosevic’s Socialist Party and its coalition partner, the neo-Communist Yugoslav United Left (JUL), which is controlled by the president’s wife, Mirjana Markovic.

Milosevic over the past two months has remained mostly silent, but reports of quarrels among different factions in his elite circle have spilled into the public.

Hard-liners from the Socialists and JUL last week called for the immediate seating of the Belgrade City Council based on the fraudulent results. Markovic was quoted by the independent Belgrade daily Nasa Borba as questioning why secret police had remained inactive in the “special war against Serbia being conducted on the streets by people indoctrinated by foreign mercenaries.”

That and similar comments were seen as an invitation for a crackdown on the mostly peaceful demonstrators.

Diplomats, meanwhile, welcomed the recognition of the election results Tuesday but suggested the outcome of political infighting was still unclear, leaving the situation in Serbia unstable. “It looks like they have turned back the clock to Nov. 18,” a diplomat said. “It seems impressive--a big move--but we must see what happens in other cities and whether the results are implemented.”

Tuesday’s development came a day after the opposition had convened hundreds of thousands of people in Belgrade’s city center for a celebration of the Orthodox New Year’s Eve--the biggest demonstration yet. But with the key demand of winning Belgrade seemingly fulfilled, it remained uncertain whether the protests will sustain their momentum.

The decision gives Zajedno a clear majority on the Belgrade City Council, opening opposition access to electronic media, which until now has been almost totally controlled by Milosevic or his allies.

Victories at the municipal level, while representing only nominal power, also give the opposition a look into the records of city government, where widespread corruption and graft have allowed the Socialists to profit. Perhaps most important, city halls provide the opposition with a significant political platform before national elections later this year.