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BELGRADE, March 15: Yugoslav military police arrested a US diplomat and a former top Milosevic-era general in a Belgrade restaurant on Thursday night and accused them of espionage, officials said on Friday.
Plain-clothes officers roughed up the envoy and interrogated him over spying allegations during a 17-hour incarceration, the US embassy said. Washington issued a sharp rebuke, saying it had complained to the highest levels in Yugoslavia.
“The United States government is outraged at this unwarranted detention,” said spokesman Paul Denig. “The embassy has delivered forceful protests about these actions.”
Momcilo Perisic, a former chief of staff of the Yugoslav army and now a deputy prime minister in the Serbian government, was still in military custody late on Friday.
Investigators found audio recordings of meetings of the Yugoslav army chiefs of staff in the diplomat’s briefcase, according to a pre-print story sent to Reuters by Danas newspaper. It gave no source for the claim.
Other media speculated the material was intended as evidence against former President Slobodan Milosevic, who is on trial in The Hague on war crimes charges. Prosecutors hope to tie him to atrocities blamed on the Yugoslav army in Kosovo.
The Yugoslav and Serbian governments held a joint crisis session. Media reports said Serbia was demanding Perisic’s release from the military, which answers to Yugoslav federal authorities.
Radio B-92 said Perisic had been brought to the Serbian government building “dressed like a detainee” with the laces removed from his shoes. Reporters later saw him driven away in an army van escorted by two jeeps.
INTERNAL DISPUTES: The incident was likely to exacerbate tension between the government of Serbian premier Zoran Djindjic, which reportedly knew little of the arrest, and moderate nationalist Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who commands the army.
“In addition to our concerns about our diplomat we are also concerned about this apparent attack on an elected representative of the Serbian government,” Denig added.
Relations between the US and Belgrade have been repaired since US warplanes led the airstrikes in 1999 that forced Serb forces out of the majority ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo.
But this incident will complicate ties. The Yugoslav foreign ministry said in a statement it “could significantly influence the relations between our two countries.”
Yugoslavia is made up of Serbia and tiny Montenegro, with the military being one of the few bodies that still functions at the federal level. Just this week the European Union brokered a deal that would see the Yugoslav Federation dissolved soon.—Reuters
