Proposal Would Refine Sanctions Against Serbia

WASHINGTON —  The United States and Britain on Wednesday proposed adjusting the international sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Serbia, suspending a ban on all commercial flights by European carriers but tightening measures that target Belgrade’s ruling elite.

The proposal calls for broadening a visa ban that prevents about 600 people linked to the Yugoslav president or his government from traveling to other European countries or the United States, and further restricting the financial dealings of firms controlled by Belgrade or associated with the regime.

“We want to make sure that the sanctions we pick are sanctions that are targeted effectively on the regime and hit Milosevic and his cronies,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters at a joint news conference with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. “We do not want to hit the Serb people, who are already hit hard enough by President Milosevic.”

The steps, said to be largely the idea of European leaders, are expected to win endorsement by the rest of America’s key allies at a European Union meeting of foreign ministers scheduled for Monday in Brussels.

The proposal to suspend the ban on commercial flights into Belgrade is intended to ease a restriction that has punished the Serbian people along with their leaders. Albright and Cook said it was made at the request of Serbia’s democratic opposition political parties, a group, they noted, that has shown greater unity and a growing sense of common purpose in recent months.

The decision has two overt objectives: rewarding Serbia’s opposition parties and letting potential voters in Serbia see that those parties can influence events in their favor. Serbia is the dominant republic in the rump Yugoslavia, and Belgrade is the capital of both.

But the move also has an additional goal of shoring up unity among the United States and its European allies on the sanctions issue. Recently, some nations, such as Italy, have pushed for an easing of punitive measures against Belgrade, and others have failed to enforce the existing sanctions.

“There’s been a tendency toward unevenness [in sanctions enforcement], and we were concerned it’s not working as well as it could,” said one European diplomat who declined to be identified. “Now is the time to tighten up.”

U.S. officials said the flight ban will be reimposed if Milosevic fails to hold free and fair elections within six months.

The move marks the third time since the end of the Kosovo war last spring that the Clinton administration has followed Europe’s lead on easing measures intended to isolate Milosevic and hasten his political demise. The United States initially opposed a European plan to provide heating oil to two cities controlled by opposition parties last fall but later relented.

The Clinton administration also softened its stance on the conditions needed for lifting the sanctions, dropping its insistence that Milosevic himself leave office and instead requiring only that Serbia hold free and fair elections.