World

Heavy Pressure On Milosevic

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 27, 2000 / 1:56 PM EDT / CBS

President Clinton accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic Wednesday of trying to steal the election from the opposition and said the United States would support the people of Serbia.

"It certainly appears from a distance that they had a free election and somebody is trying to take it away from them," President Clinton told reporters in the White House Rose Garden.

President Clinton was expressing outrage at the decision by Yugoslavia's state-run Federal Election Commission Tuesday to schedule a runoff round after reporting that opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica beat Milosevic in the first round but failed to get 50 percent.

The commission said Kostunica finished with 48.22 percent to 40.23 percent for Milosevic.

Reacting to that, Mr. Clinton said the Yugoslavian "government's official election commission has no credibility whatever."

Mr. Clinton said the opposition will "have to decide how to respond to this. And I think what Europe and the United States should do is support the express will of the Serbian people."

"The opposition clearly believes it got over 50 percent ," and independent observers agree, said President Clinton before leaving Washington on a trip to Texas.

Kostunica has said he will not participate in a runoff because the opposition is confident it got a majority in the vote but that the government is trying to deny him a victory.

In Belgrade Wednesday, 200,000 rallied against Milosevic, and the opposition tried in vain to count the ballots recorded by the election commission.

President Clinton is not the only source of international criticism of the way the Yugoslavian government is handling the election and its results.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says the results released by the election commission do not reflect political reality.

I urge the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and especially the Federal Election Commission to finally respect the results of Sunday's elections," said OSCE chairman and Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

The Serbian people have voted for a future in peace and security and have elected Vojislav Kostunica for president," added Ferrero-Waldner.

The OSCE, Europe's leading electoral monitoring body, was not allowed to monitor the Yugoslav election.

The OSCE is calling on authorities to show restraint in responding to public demonstrations and refrain from any actions that could incite unrest.