Orthodox Church in Serbia Calls on Milosevic to Quit

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia —  Serbia’s influential Orthodox Church urged Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday to resign as president of Yugoslavia, saying the country needs new leaders “acceptable at home and abroad” after its military defeat in Kosovo.

“Every sensible person has to realize that numerous internal problems and . . . the isolation of our country on the international scene cannot be solved or overcome with this kind of leadership,” said a statement signed by the bishops of Serbia’s dominant church.

“We demand that the federal president and his government resign in the interest and the salvation of the people so that new officials acceptable at home and abroad can take responsibility for the people and their future as a National Salvation government,” it added.

The statement of the Holy Synod, the Orthodox Church’s highest body, came as Yugoslav forces continued their withdrawal from Kosovo. In their wake, more than 10,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from Macedonia and Albania joined a homecoming rush into the province, ignoring warnings by aid workers and NATO to wait. Two returning refugees were killed by land mines Tuesday when they strayed off a highway to bypass NATO vehicles.

NATO-led peacekeepers moving into Kosovo, meanwhile, secured two more sites Tuesday where ethnic Albanians reportedly were massacred this spring during a wave of terror by Milosevic’s forces that drove hundreds of thousands of Kosovars from the province.

Milosevic has been fighting for his political life since accepting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s demands for ending its 78 days of bombing, including withdrawal of all Yugoslav troops, police and paramilitary forces over an 11-day period, the safe return of an estimated 1 million ethnic Albanian refugees and negotiations on a degree of political autonomy for Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority.

The withdrawal from Kosovo, a poor province of Yugoslavia’s main republic, Serbia, is a severe blow to Serbian pride. Although ethnic Albanians made up about 90% of Kosovo’s prewar population of 2 million, the province is Serbia’s symbolic heartland, full of historical sites and some of the Orthodox Church’s holiest shrines.

NATO’s bombing devastated much of Serbia and deepened Yugoslavia’s international isolation. Western leaders have set Milosevic’s removal as a condition for sending reconstruction aid to any part of the republic except Kosovo.

On Monday, the hawkish Serbian Radical Party quit the president’s three-party ruling coalition, wiping out its majority in the Yugoslav federal parliament. The Alliance for Change, comprising opposition parties and nongovernmental organizations, has called for Milosevic’s resignation after 12 years of ruling first Serbia and then Yugoslavia.

Zoran Djindjic, head of the opposition Democratic Party, said Tuesday that the bishops could do far more than the political parties to rally a consensus for Milosevic’s resignation. Kosovo’s religious significance lends weight to the church’s statement.

The Orthodox Church, one of Serbia’s most respected institutions, supported and bolstered pro-democracy demonstrations more than two years ago that forced Milosevic to recognize opposition gains in local elections.

The reclusive Milosevic has reacted to the latest challenges from the church and opposition parties with two days of stump speeches. In Novi Sad on Monday and Aleksinac on Tuesday, he said it was important to correct the world’s image of Yugoslavia, a federation that has lost four of its republics in three wars during his dominance.

In Aleksinac, he said he hoped that “our country never again experiences another war, that our country can be developed, happy and free.” In Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, he promoted and decorated officers who led the Kosovo operation.

Milosevic and four top aides were indicted last month by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on charges of ordering atrocities in Kosovo.

In other developments Tuesday:

* Lt. Col. Robin Clifford, a spokesman for the allied force, said he had “every indication” that Yugoslav forces had met their midnight Tuesday deadline for pulling out of southern Kosovo, including the provincial capital, Pristina, the first stage of their withdrawal. British NATO patrols reported no sign of Yugoslav forces in the city at that hour. Clifford said about 20,000 of the 40,000 Yugoslav security force personnel in Kosovo during the NATO air campaign had already left or were on the move.

* With NATO forces streaming into the province, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon in Washington said he expects U.S. forces to announce orders to begin returning aircraft to the U.S. “within a few days.” The Pentagon, which has about 700 planes in the theater, will bring back heavy bombers first and leave a “fairly significant” force of fighter planes and support aircraft, Bacon said.

* State Department officials confirmed that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen will meet with Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev on Thursday in Helsinki, Finland, to discuss ongoing disagreements between Moscow and the West over how Russian troops should participate in the peacekeeping effort.

Since entering Kosovo on Saturday, NATO forces have secured sites of alleged massacres in at least three villages listed in the indictments, in order to allow the tribunal’s investigators to gather more evidence. NATO officials said they will be looking for other sites as the peacekeeping force builds to about 50,000 soldiers.

Soldiers from a Dutch artillery battalion found the charred, skeletal remains of 21 people Tuesday in or near a barn in Velika Krusa. Officials said the victims appeared to have been shot before being burned.

The bodies, including at least one child, are believed to be some of the 105 Albanian villagers reportedly killed in Velika Krusa on March 25, the day after NATO started bombing.

British soldiers found 81 freshly dug graves Monday in Kacanik, site of a reported April 8-9 massacre that took the lives of about 100 ethnic Albanians.

On Tuesday, Italian troops discovered a mass grave near Korenica--a place not listed in the indictment. A hand and arm protruded from one of the graves, and the top of a head stuck out from the earth. Nearby, a burned house contained five charred bodies of men who appeared to have been shot.

But NATO arrived in Kosovo at least a week late to protect the graves of victims of what was believed to be the worst massacre, at Izbica, where villagers say Serbian troops dug up and removed about 150 corpses early this month.

Meanwhile, the peacekeepers continued to be troubled by scattered violence between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

Yugoslav soldiers on their way out of Kosovo moved through the village of Donje Ljupce with gasoline cans, setting fire to ethnic Albanian houses. A Serb threw a grenade at a group of ethnic Albanians celebrating the departure of Yugoslav troops in southern Kosovo, wounding eight children and two adults.

NATO said an ethnic Albanian fired on a car in Pristina carrying Serbs, killing one person and wounding another. British troops arrested five suspected members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, after the shooting.

At the Pentagon, officials said about two dozen people have been killed in 25 to 30 skirmishes that have occurred in Kosovo since the peacekeeping effort began Saturday. The dead include Yugoslav soldiers and police officers, ethnic Albanians and two German journalists, but no NATO troops, officials said.

“There is no major fighting going on any longer, but we can’t hide the fact . . . that there have been a large number of very regrettable incidents,” NATO spokesman Jamie Shea told reporters in Brussels.

The peace agreement obliges NATO to “demilitarize” the KLA, but the alliance has made few moves to stop the armed rebels from holding victory parades, directing traffic and setting up urban headquarters across the province.

Peacekeepers struggled to curb the KLA, which is racing to fill the vacuum left by Yugoslav forces. German forces retook control of the Morine border crossing between Yugoslavia and Albania from the rebels, who had occupied it late Monday.

NATO officials said that they were negotiating with the rebels on whether and when the KLA must surrender weapons and that NATO would issue specific instructions to alliance commanders later this week.

The Western alliance also has been plagued by an unresolved dispute with Russia, which is demanding control of its own peacekeeping sector and refusing to serve under NATO command. A contingent of about 200 Russian soldiers arrived first in Kosovo on Saturday, taking Pristina’s airport, and they have refused to give up control.

A convoy of trucks carrying 29 Russian soldiers arrived in Pristina on Tuesday with supplies for the airport contingent. The Pentagon said the convoy consisted of 11 vehicles, including a bakery truck, which carried mostly food, water, water purification equipment and other miscellaneous supplies.

The Russians had brought only a day’s supply of water and had been relying on British assistance, said Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman.

With the Russians holding the airport, NATO was forced to move its headquarters Tuesday to Pristina’s main police complex.

On the Web

Extended coverage of the events in Yugoslavia is available at The Times’ Web site at https://www.latimes.com/yugo. Coverage includes hourly updates, all Times stories since NATO launched its attack, video clips, information on how to help the refugees, a primer on the conflict and access to our discussion group.

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Times staff writers Marjorie Miller in Djakovica, Yugoslavia, Richard C. Paddock in Moscow, and Paul Richter and Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.