Serbia arrests suspects in hunt for PM killers

11.45am

BELGRADE - Serbian police swept through the underworld in their hunt for the killers of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, making dozens of arrests. But three prime suspects remained at large.

Police arrested 56 people, a government statement said, including eight key members of a criminal group it said was behind the assassination of the reformist premier, who played a pivotal role in the ouster of ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in late 2000.

Three of them had asked for protected witness status and were giving statements to a special prosecutor.

But the government said police were still looking for the three leaders of the so-called Zemun gang, including a former commander of a special police unit that saw action in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Acting prime minister Nebojsa Covic said the perpetrators were set on changing the whole nature of the government.

"The goal of those who committed this crime was to destabilise the country, the authorities in the country and to create chaos and to change power that way," he told B92 television.

But the finance minister said reforms would continue and Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic, another leading reformer, told a news conference the government would not be cowed.

"We will arrest all those who planned this and those who resist we will liquidate," he told a news conference.

The European Union, which Serbia aspires to join, rushed to give assurances that the 15-nation bloc would support Belgrade in its attempts to shore up stability in Serbia and the Balkans.

European foreign policy chief Javier Solana and External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten flew to Belgrade to express the EU's continued political and financial support for Serbia, impoverished after a decade of Balkan wars and isolation.

"There can be no going back, no turning back," Patten said.

Political analysts said Serbia had to move swiftly to crush the criminal gangs behind the murder or face chronic instability which will ruin its chances of rejoining Europe's mainstream.

"It is a wake-up call, especially for those in the West who have failed to acknowledge the power of organised crime in southeast Europe," Misha Glenny, author of books on the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans, told Reuters.

Djindjic, 50, who became prime minister in February 2001, was shot outside Belgrade's main government building.

It was Djindjic who sent Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity linked to the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The decision enraged Serbian nationalists.

Glenny played down talk of a descent into civil war, but experts said a prolonged power vacuum could spark more political violence, scare off much-needed foreign investment and drag down the rest of the Balkan region.

The government, vowing to press on with reforms to snuff out the mafia-like culture spawned under Milosevic's rule, named around 20 of the Zemun gang's alleged leaders.

Among those still at large was Milorad Lukovic, a former head of the "Red Berets" -- a battle-hardened special police unit which fought in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The government announced three days of mourning for Djindjic -- the first European government leader to be killed since Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.

Hundreds of mourners filed by the government building in central Belgrade, laying flowers and lighting candles. Djindjic's funeral will be held in Belgrade on Saturday.

His death leaves Serbia with neither a prime minister or elected president since two votes failed due to a low turnout.

Another presidential poll is not expected for several months, but Djindjic's Democratic Party, the biggest in the ruling DOS coalition, said it would nominate a new prime minister on Sunday.

Covic, a deputy prime minister and leader of a smaller party, said he did not want to extend his role as acting prime minister and told B92 it had been agreed it was up to the Democratic Party to chose a replacement.

Franz-Lothar Altmann of Germany's Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik raised the prospect of a power struggle. "A long period of instability could endanger everything, above all economic stabilisation, if a credible successor is not swiftly found."

Finance Minister Bozidar Djelic vowed that the government's Western-backed reforms would not slow down.

Western leaders, who have deployed thousands of Nato peacekeeping troops across the former Yugoslavia since the Balkan wars of the 1990s, accused extremists of trying to return the region to the chaos of the Milosevic era.

Belgrade police chief Milan Obradovic said one assassin with a sniper rifle and two with hand guns took part in Djindjic's killing and that none of them had been arrested. One of Djindjic's bodyguards was seriously wounded.

- REUTERS