Word: serbian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...couple of days at the start of last weekend, it looked as if even jail might be out of the question. The quandary of whether to arrest Milosevic, 59, had been haunting the new Serbian government of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and President Vojislav Kostunica. Their arrival in power last fall, spurred by a popular revolt against Milosevic's final attempt to steal a presidential election, was not a complete clean slate. Both men are reluctant to send Milosevic and other indicted war criminals to the Hague. Both men too had troubling records of their own. Kostunica, hailed...
...kind of compromise. Instead of a trip to the Hague on war-crimes charges, he may only face domestic courts on counts of stealing money from the government and resisting arrest. He will face his accusers, be judged and serve his time, if convicted, in a Serbian jail...
...European demands on the new Serbian leaders was for a sign that the bad old regime would be held accountable. To let men like Milosevic--or the officers around him who had been indicted by the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague--walk away from their crimes would tarnish the hard-won idea of international accountability. Last fall, even as the White House celebrated Milosevic's defeat, Washington sent a carrot-and-stick signal to Belgrade: Milosevic must be arrested by March 31 or millions in U.S. aid would be frozen, along with a big piece of U.S. goodwill...
...white van loaded with special police units in stocking masks and jeans roared up to the leafy compound where the ex-strongman had been holed up since last fall. Hurling stun grenades, they burst past a knot of angry loyalists singing patriotic songs and vaulted the iron gates. (The Serbian army, which once strongly backed Milosevic, remained in its barracks...
...played out in the Balkans. All day on Saturday, Milosevic and his minions remained squirreled away as the government formulated a plan and as TV cameras watched from a distance. In that vacuum, events spilled easily into farce. Loyalists, mostly elderly socialists for whom Milosevic represents patriotic Serbian ideals, built themselves a bonfire to ward off the chill, scrawling the names of their imagined enemies--Solana (Javier, the NATO Secretary-General), Klark (Wesley Clark, the retired U.S. general) and Monika (Lewinsky, presumably)--on logs before hurling them into the blaze. The supporters "love him with their heart and soul...