Milosevic Again Delays Opposition Victories

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — The Socialist Party of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on Monday signaled its intention to fight to retain control of this capital and filed a court appeal that effectively canceled earlier rulings favoring the opposition.

The move was the latest back-and-forth in the struggle over whether Milosevic will restore Nov. 17 opposition victories that he annulled--an internationally condemned action that triggered more than two months of street demonstrations and the most persistent challenge to Milosevic’s decade-old rule.

Election commissions, which are essentially controlled by Milosevic, last week awarded electoral victories in Belgrade and Serbia’s second-largest city, Nis, to the opposition coalition Zajedno (Together). The move was widely seen as a concession by the authoritarian Serbian president.

But on Monday, as protesters rallied noisily in city streets for the 64th consecutive day, a Serbian municipal court suspended the decision that reinstated the opposition’s Belgrade victories. The court said it was acting in response to a lawsuit filed against the Belgrade Electoral Commission by Milosevic’s Socialists and their occasional allies, the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party.

Further prolonging the legal battle, Dragoljub Jankovic, president of the municipal court, said Serbia’s Supreme Court would now rule on which court has jurisdiction over the case. There is no deadline for a decision.

Milosevic apparently hopes that by creating a circus of court decisions around the annulled elections, the protests will run out of steam. Buoyed by international backing, Zajedno supporters, students and other anti-Milosevic activists have maintained surprising stamina. But in the tense waiting game with Milosevic, the demonstrators’ numbers have fallen off in recent days.

Opposition officials dismissed Monday’s court suspension, urging the judicial authorities to act according to their consciences and not according to political instructions. They said the suspension showed that, despite international pressure to do so, Milosevic is still unwilling to concede opposition victories in Belgrade--the capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia and Montenegro--and other towns.

Separately, a Socialist appeal to a municipal court in Nis was rejected last week, leaving in place the opposition victories there. Zajedno leaders say they will assume control of Nis City Hall on Monday.

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Ominously, the Milosevic regime also has raised the stakes in its battle to defuse opposition protests by playing the Kosovo card, a reference to the restive Serbian province whose population is mostly ethnic Albanian. State television, which is controlled by Milosevic, broadcast allegations by the Serbian Socialist mayor of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, that suggested Zajedno was connected to a car bombing last week that critically injured the Serbian rector of the city university.

Kosovo’s Albanians refuse to recognize direct rule by Belgrade, and many call for independence. But there are no known links between the Serbian opposition movement and the ethnic Albanians.

Opposition leaders condemned the bombing and went so far as to accuse the regime of staging the incident to distract public attention from the protests. “Milosevic is now playing his last card--provoke a blood bath in Kosovo to divert all attention from the election,” said Vuk Draskovic, a Zajedno leader.

Milosevic has used that tactic before. In 1987, he promised to protect minority Serbs in Kosovo, stripping the province of its autonomy and drumming up a rabid nationalism that helped foment this decade’s Balkan wars.