Yugoslavia

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - After the fall of President Slobodan Milosevic, but while his secret police chief remained in office, tons of police documents were destroyed and illegal copies of files on former opposition leaders were spirited away, Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said yesterday. "The period from Oct. 5 until Jan. 25 was used for the active destruction of evidence," Mihajlovic told the Serbian parliament. There also was "unauthorized copying onto CDs of data from the files of all opposition leaders, which was taken away from the service for still unknown reasons," Mihajlovic said.

INCARCERATION of the sadistic dictator Slobodan Milosevic is a major step toward Serbia's reintegration into the community of nations. It is also not enough. The Yugoslav government of democratically elected President Vojislav Kostunica deserves credit for making the arrest and for waiting out a confrontation with armed and drunken bodyguards long enough to avoid threatened bloodshed. It was done just in time to bring a favorable decision by the United States to continue its modest $50 million in bilateral aid and to support Yugoslavia's loan requests to international lending agencies.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Two years ago, NATO went to war against Yugoslavia and Yugoslav opposition leader Zoran Djindjic went on the run, fearing not bombs but security agents operating under the thumb of Slobodan Milosevic. Now, Djindjic is Serbia's prime minister, Milosevic is in jail and the discredited regime's dark secrets are seeping out. And the way Djindjic sees it, Milosevic's legal problems will become graver as the former Yugoslav president is ensnared in his past abuses. Yesterday, Djindjic said that in the next month or two he expects local prosecutors to gather enough evidence to link Milosevic with ordering political assassinations, and asserted that the murderous trail might also lead to Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was ordered detained for 30 days by an investigative judge yesterday as the disgraced dictator faced Serbian justice and a spell in a Belgrade jail after his pre-dawn surrender. The man who vowed that he wouldn't be arrested alive during a tense two-day standoff with authorities pleaded not guilty to local corruption and abuse-of-power charges and began adjusting to life in his new surroundings. In a separate wing of the factory-like, four-story central prison, Milosevic has no television, no radio and no workout equipment, his attorney said.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Nothing has ever been as it seemed in Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. He was a dictator who allowed dissent, a war-maker who claimed to be a guarantor of peace, a burly man with gray hair who looked like a ward boss, dressed like a Midwestern businessman and behaved like a mobster robbing his state blind. Above all, the 59-year-old Milosevic, who viewed himself and his people as history's winners, was a loser, a man who gambled and lost vast and valuable parts of his country while hundreds of thousands of people were killed or displaced.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and taken into custody last night, ending a tense two-day standoff. Before 4:30 a.m. local time, a five-vehicle convoy was seen whisking Milosevic from his heavily guarded villa, where he had staged his desperate last stand. A Serbian Ministry of Interior spokesman said Milosevic, who faces local corruption charges, offered no resistance and had been taken to Belgrade Central Prison Zarko Korac, Serbia's deputy prime minister, told The Sun, "We tried very hard to avoid casualties, and we succeeded."

MUCIBABA, Yugoslavia -- Five years ago, Brian Scholl was enjoying his senior year in high school at Calvert Hall in Towson. Now, the 22-year-old U.S. Army sergeant is on a tree-lined hill in Kosovo, working another 16-hour shift to keep the peace in a land far from home, inspecting battered old cars and rusted trucks that trundle up a dusty road. "The locals wish we could stay here forever," says Scholl, who entered the Army shortly after graduating. "That's not going to happen." It has been two years since NATO launched its 78-day air war against Yugoslavia, and American soldiers such as Scholl are still hunkered down in the Balkans.

LJFEAT, Yugoslavia - Tomar Misini is an ethnic Albanian rebel bound to a cause. Dressed in black and carrying an AK-47 rifle, Misini patrols a makeshift checkpoint in the middle of a 3-mile-wide no man's land. In the valley below him, Yugoslav troops and police remain tucked inside Serbia. Above him, U.S. soldiers patrol a ridge in Kosovo. And around him, there is an eerie sound of silence, as a cease-fire holds between the rebel band that claims to be fighting for local rights and Serbian soldiers trying to hang on to the southern flank of their ever-dwindling country.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Tucked in an opulent government villa on Uzicka Street, guarded by soldiers from an army he led to four defeats and bolstered by three dozen civilian true believers milling around the front gate, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic awaits the final act of his ruinous appearance on the Balkan stage. Nearly six months after he was ousted in a popular uprising, Milosevic is apparently headed for an arrest as the legal net tightens locally and internationally.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - The Belgrade prosecutor's office announced yesterday that it has asked police to investigate allegations that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic illegally sold gold abroad and kept the proceeds in the bank accounts of foreign-based companies. The move marked the first time that authorities here have taken a formal legal step toward arresting the former strongman, who has been indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal and faces domestic allegations ranging from corruption to ordering political assassinations.