Yugoslavia Rejects Plan For Elections

The Yugoslav government has dismissed a new American proposal for a partial suspension of sanctions in return for early elections. It says the offer would not be honored if the government of President Slobodan Milosevic were re-elected.

Seizing on the conditional nature of the American offer and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's insistence that Milosevic could not possibly win a fair election, government spokesmen and media outlets asserted that the Americans would recognize only a vote that the government lost.

After meeting some of Yugoslavia's democratic opposition leaders, Albright announced in Washington on Wednesday that the United States would suspend embargoes on oil deliveries and flights to Belgrade if Milosevic held early, free and fair elections. Clinton administration officials previously said that all sanctions would continue as long as Milosevic remained in power.

``I find it really, really, really hard to believe that Milosevic might win a free and fair election,'' she said, quipping: ``If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bicycle.'' Senior American officials said that if an election was not free and fair, then the sanctions would not be lifted.

``For Americans, the only free and fair elections are those won by their lackeys,'' said the Yugoslav deputy prime minister, Vojislav Seselj. Ivica Dacic, the spokesman for Milosevic's Socialist Party, said, ``Those who went to see the murderers of our children should know that they could not win here, not even if Madeleine Albright counted the votes.''

While the U.S. policy shift was intended to boost the flagging opposition to Milosevic and keep it united behind the idea of early elections, Washington managed to create new tensions between opposition leaders, some of them said yesterday. Washington praised the unity of Milosevic's opponents, but the opposition is not united and is actually continuing to splinter.

And some European diplomats suggested that Washington's new strategy also was intended to keep the oil and flight embargoes, which most members of the European Union want to lift immediately. These sanctions were tied to the Kosovo conflict, which is over, the Europeans say. By tying their suspension to fair elections, Washington has tried to force the Europeans to keep the sanctions indefinitely.

While the opposition wants early elections on all levels -- local, Serbian and federal -- the Milosevic government is likely to legislate early voting next year only for local elections. Such a move could undermine and further split the opposition if some parties boycott an election and others take part.

The State Department welcomed leaders of the Alliance for Change, led by the Democratic Party leader, Zoran Djindjic, in a visit arranged by Freedom House, a human rights organization. But no one invited Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest opposition party, and the man whose strategy of early elections Washington has now embraced after rejecting it for six months.

Djindjic, who faces criticism from colleagues who say his strategy of daily rallies has hurt their party and nearly bankrupted it, went to Washington to shore up his credibility at home, party officials acknowledge. Djindjic is pressing the alliance members to run a single slate of candidates. But his efforts have caused the Alliance for Change to splinter. Some parties have left the alliance.

By granting this policy shift to Djindjic and Dragoslav Avramovic -- the 80-year-old candidate for prime minister for a transitional government that no one expects to be named -- Washington badly offended Draskovic.