World

Yugoslav Candidate Attacked

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 14, 2000 / 6:28 PM EDT / CBS

Supporters of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic broke up the campaign rally of the leading opposition candidate Thursday, hurling stones, cans and tomatoes at his main presidential election rival in the city of Kosovska Mitrovica.

Opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica, campaigning in Serb populated areas of Kosovo, was hit in the face and the leg by stones.

The violence erupted when supporters of Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party attacked the convoy of cars carrying Kostunica, his aides and journalists. Eight people sought medical help, a local hospital official said.

The melee failed to discourage Kostunica, who is leading Milosevic in opinion polls ahead of the September 24 vote. Afterword, the soft-spoken law professor wiped the blood from beneath a small cut under his eye and suggested that Milosevic must feel threatened if he had resorted to violence.

"I am ashamed because I am a Serb, but I am also very satisfied because this means that Milosevic is weaker than ever," Kostunica said.

The rally in Kosovska Mitrovica was intended to be a moment of glory for Kostunica, who was touring Kosovo's isolated Serb enclaves on his first visit to the province as a presidential candidate.
"Lacking the courage to face either me or the people, Milosevic is exploiting those few desperate souls who are ready to take a fistful of freshly printed money in order to tarnish the reputation of the people of Mitrovica and the remaining Kosovo Serbs," Kostunica said.

"He (Milosevic) put you up to this - God will forgive you but God will not forgive him," Kostunica managed to say to his attackers.

Kostunica's security guards tried to shelter him from the violence and surrounded him as he attempted to speak, finally pushing him off the stage.

Milosevic's supporters then grew more violent, attacking Kostunica's convoy and smashing windshields. They blocked the cars and started hitting and kicking them, shouting "Slobo, Slobo!" and "Traitors" at Kostunica and his supporters. One vehicle was almost completely smashed.

Kostunica criticized NATO peacekeepers for failing to intervene even though they were standing at the edge of the crowd.

Riots are common in Kosovska Mitrovica, a town divided by the Ibar River into a southern ethnic Albanian side and a predominantly Serb northern part. Thursday's attack, however, pitted Serb against Serb and showed that hard-liners may be gaining the upper hand in the enclave.

Official Serbian television said Thursday that Kostunica's visit to Kosovska Mitrovica was a "disgrace" and showed what Kosovo Serbs thought about the opposition candidate's alliance with "those who want to break up Serbia."

But the fiasco is unlikely to change Kostunica's lead in the polls. Serbia is radically polarized between Milosevic's supporters and those who oppose the autocratic ruler of Yugoslavia, which also encompasses the much smaller republic of Montenegro.

his division among Serbs also exists in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. Despite a strong following for Kostunica among the province's dwindling Serb population, Belgrade-backed thugs who have stayed behind retain a firm footing.

The acknowledged leader of the city's Serb community, Oliver Ivanovic, watched the crowd's behavior uneasily, and blamed Milosevic's forces for "a setup."

"Our dismay is that much greater that we did not prevent Mr. Kostunica from being exposed to such an extremely unpleasant situation," he said. "We all know that he was the only Serb politician who really took to heart the plight of our people here."

Though Milosevic has pledged to travel to this seat of Serb nationalism, NATO leaders have promised to arrest him on war crimes charges leveled by a United Nations court. Peacekeepers and U.N. administrators have controlled the province since June 1999, after a NATO air war forced Milosevic to end his repression of ethnic Albanians and pull his forces out.

The Yugoslav government announced this month that federal presidential and parliamentary elections would be held in Kosovo, despite the fact the province has been run by a U.N.-led administration since last year.

Kosovo is critical to the presidential campaign, in part because no census has taken place here for more than a decade and the number of eligible voters is not known. Lack of data on the size of the electorate could open the door to manipulation of election figures.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority has long boycotted any Yugoslav vote, and was focused Thursday on another, unrelated election - a U.N. organized ballot for October 28 local elections in Kosovo.