Milosevic Moves to Silence Opposition News Broadcasters

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — In a move likely to silence independent media, the authoritarian regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has imposed large licensing fees on radio and television stations and denied permits to dozens of opposition broadcasters.

The restrictions will in effect shut down many of the country’s rare sources of uncensored television and radio news, critics say.

Milosevic is enacting the de facto ban at the same time that Washington and its European allies have withdrawn the threat of new, potentially crippling economic sanctions--as reward to the Yugoslav leader for opening talks with ethnic Albanian separatists.

Having escaped the sanctions, Milosevic in recent days has set about to crush opposition wherever it might sprout. In addition to the moves against the electronic media, authorities are:

* Seizing control of previously autonomous state universities and taking over the appointment of faculty members. The universities produced student leaders who led months of demonstrations against Milosevic in the winter of 1996-97, the most serious challenge to his regime.

* Stepping up attacks on reformist politicians in Montenegro, Serbia’s partner republic in the rump Yugoslavia, ahead of crucial elections this weekend that could strengthen Milosevic’s hand and undermine Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, one of Milosevic’s staunchest critics.

Vreme, Belgrade’s leading anti-government newsmagazine, predicted that Milosevic will get away with cracking down because U.S. officials will overlook such transgressions, having decided that they need him to stop full-scale war in Serbia’s convulsive Kosovo province, where majority ethnic Albanians are fighting for independence.

It is a political strategy Milosevic has exploited before--making himself invaluable to Western mediators forging peace in the Balkans at the expense of fledgling domestic democratic movements.

Most people in Yugoslavia get their news from television or radio, where state-controlled networks dominate. Dozens of small stations sprang up after Yugoslavia’s Communist monopoly on news was relaxed in the late 1980s, and they were tolerated as long as they were not critical of the government.

Earlier this year, however, an embattled Milosevic announced that broadcasters would be licensed as a way to “regulate” chaotic airwaves. The government’s Telecommunications Ministry on May 16 revealed that it had denied nearly 180 applications for licenses, while granting 247 permits to mostly small and regional radio and television stations that specialize in entertainment and music and lack news.

“Only stations who turn their listeners into idiots are being authorized,” said Branko Nikolic, editor in chief of a small station in the Serbian town of Pozega. “This will strangle most media that do not toe the government line . . . a brutal policy of an undemocratic government that places loyalty over professionalism.”

Among those to receive licenses were Milosevic’s son, Marko, who will operate something called Radio Madonna, headquartered in his sprawling discotheque; and several of Milosevic’s political allies, including the ultranationalist Radical Party.

Among those denied frequencies were nearly all members of the Assn. of Independent Electronic Media, a group of radio and TV stations widely regarded as the country’s only counterbalance to the dominant pro-government news broadcasters.

Three of the association’s members, including the internationally known B-92 radio station, were granted licenses but face huge fees that in some cases eclipsed their operating budgets. B-92 editors calculated that they would have to pay nearly $12,000 a month to the state to remain on the air, an enormous price by Balkan standards.

Under pressure and facing lawsuits, the government Wednesday reduced the fees by 75%. But the association still considers the cost too high; for B-92, for example, the fee still is roughly equal to what the station pays to cover the conflict in Kosovo, said the media association’s network coordinator, Dusan Masic.

The association launched a campaign, complete with letter-writing and a “solidarity Web site,” to overturn the fees and bans and to save Yugoslavia from what it is calling “media darkness.”

Milosevic’s move to rein in electronic media, universities and his Montenegrin enemies came after he dodged the bullet of new sanctions that would have outlawed foreign investment in Yugoslavia.

The West decided against going ahead with the sanction after Milosevic met May 15 for the first time with Ibrahim Rugova, leader of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian community, as the start of a regular dialogue.

Rugova is scheduled to meet today in Washington with President Clinton, who is offering a show of support for Rugova’s policies, which favor pacifism over an armed struggled against the Yugoslav regime.

Meanwhile, NATO-led forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina on Thursday arrested a Bosnian Serb indicted for war crimes committed in the early 1990s at the Omarska internment camp near the town of Prijedor in northwest Bosnia.

The suspect was identified as 35-year-old Milojica “Krle” Kos, a shift commander at the camp. He was arrested in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka, according to a NATO statement.

The indictment said camp guards and other Kos subordinates “regularly and openly killed, raped, tortured, beat, and otherwise subjected prisoners to conditions of constant humiliation, degradation and fear of death.”

Kos was to be taken to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. His arraignment is expected sometime next week, tribunal spokesman Christian Chartier said.

Times wire services contributed to this report.