Serb Warlord’s Truly Shotgun Wedding : Matrimony: Weapons blazing, a suspected war criminal also wanted by Interpol marries the queen of ‘turbo-folk’ music.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  Charles and Diana, watch out. It’s Arkan and Ceca.

Serbia on Sunday celebrated the wedding of its most notorious warlord to its most popular singer at a ceremony where thugs with scars and dark sunglasses rubbed shoulders with pop stars, the spokesman for the ruling Socialists and a senior police chief.

“The only difference between us and the royal couple is we love each other and are faithful to one another,” bride Svetlana Velickovic, known to her adoring fans as Ceca, said of her new husband, the warlord twice her age who calls himself Arkan.

In Serbia, the baby-faced Arkan, 42, who was born Zeljko Raznjatovic, is mostly revered as the brave leader of the feared Serbian paramilitary group known as the Tigers. The militia has left a trail of devastation and blood in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Arkan says he has done nothing wrong. “I killed a lot of people in a fair fight, soldier fighting against soldier.”

The State Department thinks otherwise. In 1992, Arkan was named to a roster of suspected war criminals. He is already on Interpol’s most-wanted list, accused of bank robberies and murder in a handful of European countries.

Ceca is the queen of “turbo-folk,” a tacky blend of Asian, traditional and canned music. Since the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation--leaving only a Yugoslavia made up of Serbia and its tiny ally Montenegro--its pulsating beat has drowned out all other music.

Turbo-folk is especially cherished by Serbia’s nouveaux riche s, many of whom have made their fortunes out of war.

In a country where videos of sparsely dressed women with moves that would make Elvis cringe dominate television screens, Ceca is the ultimate object of desire. Last week she won Serbia’s popularity Oscar.

Instead of facing resentment about their wealth, Arkan and Ceca are the country’s modern idols, a burst of color in monochrome Serbia--a land where, after years of footing the bill for war and facing U.N. sanctions, the majority of people are struggling to make ends meet.

Arkan’s wedding party was not dampened by the presence of sanctions, which include an oil embargo. Indeed, he is believed to have made a fortune selling fuel despite the sanctions.

“We have to live under sanctions, but we have to be happy,” he said. “They can put sanctions on Serbia, but they cannot impose sanctions on our hearts.”

Sunday’s wedding was held at a Serbian Orthodox Church in an exclusive Belgrade suburb. The groom was dressed in a stylized World War I military uniform, his bride wrapped in yards of white tulle in a dress inspired by “Gone With the Wind.”

Climbing out of a maroon stretch Jaguar with a gold grill and California license plates, the couple oozed glamour and glitz.

Arkan pledged that this--his third wedding--would be his last. Ceca, he insists, will bear five children to add to his seven.

It was a day of many venues and costume changes in a romance that has captivated the nation. At dawn, a convoy of 40 vehicles with tinted windshields sped 190 miles along a near-deserted highway to Ceca’s native village in southern Serbia.

According to tradition, Arkan had to shoot down an apple hanging on a pole above her house. It took six blasts of a twin-barrel hunting rifle. He is, he said, better with a pistol.

His short-haired cronies in their black overcoats fired pistols, revolvers and assault rifles in a blaze of celebratory gunfire.

The wedding party then returned to Belgrade, where Arkan has built their fantasy house--a fortress that looks like a huge Greek coffee shop.

Then more gunfire. No guns, please, guests were forewarned before heading to the church.

Arkan waved to about 2,000 people lining the street. “What a lovely couple,” one onlooker remarked. “He’s been married a few times. But he loved Ceca so much, he left his wife.”