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WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday abruptly changed course in its policy toward Serbia, dropping a demand that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic be removed from power before sanctions are lifted.
Instead, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said sanctions, initially a flight ban and oil embargo, would be removed once a free and fair election was held despite risks that Milosevic might win the vote.
"We believe it is vital that the people of Serbia understand that if they have the courage to bring down the walls of repression that separate them from a democratic future, they will not face that future alone," Albright said after meeting with eight Serbian opposition leaders here.
The opposition has in the past been notoriously splintered and the new US tack has raised concerns that the anti-Milosevic vote could be so split as to allow him to win.
But US officials said the group -- which did not include perhaps the most prominent Serb opposition politician, former deputy premier Vuk Draskovic -- had assured them that they would be able to mount a united front against Milosevic in a democratic elections.
"We believe there has been a substantial increase in the 'togetherness' quotient of the opposition," said one senior State Department official.
Albright, speaking to reporters while flanked by the eight leaders, refused flatly to consider the question of what would happen should Milosevic win.
"I find it really, really, really hard to believe that Milosevic might win a free and fair election," she said, noting rising internal discontent toward the Belgrade regime.
"I expect that the people of Serbia who have suffered under the boot of Slobodan Milosevic ... will choose correctly," she said, before turning testy under repeated questioning of the possibility of a Milosevic electoral victory.
"If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle," Albright snapped at one point, saying the entire issue was hypothetical.
The State Department official, seeking to soften the secretary's tone, said after her comments that Washington considered the risk of Milosevic winning a genuinely free and fair ballot "to be so remote as to not to be a policy-making consideration."
They said the legitimacy of the any ballot in Serbia would be judged by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.