MOB-HANDED IN MONTENEGRO

Richard Bassett witnesses

the effects of Mr Milosevic's nationalist agitation

Montenegro THE mob is alwayS unpleasant. In Serbia it is particularly disagreeable. So it was with a feeling of some relief and gratitude that I watched the chief of the Montenegrin police at the weekend, deliver his warning to the Titograd students to disperse and then issue the memorable command: 'Gentlemen of the Milica, carry out your orders.' There's nothing the Montenegrin likes more than a good scrap accompanied by some oratory.

There are many outside Yugoslavia who saw in last weekend's violence — mild by Balkan standards — the beginning of the end. Marshal Tito's nonsense of a country made up of contradictory religions, races and above all histories cannot survive for much longer, they argue. As if to reinforce this pessimistic view the numbers of British `diplomats' taking their 'holidays' in Yugoslavia has increased steadily in recent years. As Bullivant told Hannay, 'A dry wind is blowing in the east; the parched grasses await the spark.'

Sadly it has not only been the West which has been watching Yugoslavia close- ly these past years. By far the most disturbing sight in Titograd last weekend was a young student who held a large audience spellbound with the following words: 'We must unite to restore socialism to our land. Market forces are capitalism. It cannot be allowed to conquer us!'

The speaker was about 22 years.old. His audience was mesmerised and pathetic; convinced by this rubbish. Like many other speakers, this young man had been trained in a school of propaganda which is working overtime at present. Another of their activities is the 'travelling circus' of rabble- rousers who pop up at the larger demon- strations demanding the heads of any politician who is in any way a moderate.

It remains to be seen whether the enigmatic Mr Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who is desperate to assume the mantle of the late Marshal, is more than just the inspiration behind all this. His sense of timing is faultless. Standing up for Serbian history if not Serbian reality in Kosovo, he has whipped up emotions which until a year ago most Serbs had regarded as the rantings of a deranged minority. Today no Serb cautions modera- tion. The press, once the most indepen- dently minded in the country, has been purged by Milosevic. Even a so-called `eminent veteran dissident' like Milovan Djilas believes that a more democratic Yugoslavia is on the way.

Milosevic, a former banker, has , given the Times's distinguished correspondent in Belgrade, Madame Trevisan, two ominous hints that suggest no such thing is immi- nent. 'What do the means matter if the end is all-important?' he confided to her over lunch recently, adding, 'Crisis? What cri- sis? It's about time we provoked a crisis. Then we'll have change!'

Milosevic's wife is by all accounts an orthodox communist who was overheard to say in a remarkable statement against the prevailing zeitgeist in communist Europe that 'capitalism has had its day'. Now the Serbian woman is not to be taken lightly. Churchill found one of Marshal Tito's amazonian aides-de-camp during the war so devastating that he parted with his favourite cigar-lighter to give her a souve- nir.

It may well be that Mrs Milosevic is less formidable than her husband, but some- how I doubt it. As neighbouring Romania all too vividly illustrates, in the Balkans few women close to the seat of power remain in the kitchen.

But the forces of reason, as the Mon- tenegrin police demonstrated at the weekend, are rallying. The federal govern- ment which agreed to the Montenegrin police move is determined to head Milosevic off. By exporting his brand of nationalism from the autonomous pro- vinces of Voivodina and Kosovo to the fully-fledged republic of Montenegro, the mob committed a tactical error which made what was a Serbian issue a Yugoslav affair.

Unfortunately, the titular head of Yugoslavia, the president, Mr Raif Diz- darevic, is an unimpressive custodian of the Tito legacy. The crux of Yugoslavia's problem is the passionate Balkan need for a leader with a 'strong hand'. This basic human instinct is satisfied at the moment in Serbia by Milosevic.

Above all he has a sense of history. Kosovo, despite the ethnic Albanian majority, is Serbian soil. Not only was the flower of Serbian nobility massacred here by the Turks, but at least one of the memorable retreats by the Serbian army in the first world war was through Kosovo. This is the sort of thing that the Serb, if he forgets, can all too easily be reminded of.

Perhaps Mr Milosevic has achieved all he wants. His opponents are rattled; the autonomous provinces will almost certainly return to direct Serbian rule and he has become the most charismatic politician in the country. But the forces he has un- leashed have built up a momentum of their own and it seems unlikely that Serbian nationalism can be eradicated as easily as Marshal Tito managed to neutralise it after the war.

Compared to the present leadership of Yugoslavia Tito was a genius. He well understood that the country could always contain Croatian nationalism but that Ser- bian nationalism was more dangerous. There are now signs that the federal leadership is slowly learning this vital lesson. Should they fail to draw the right conclusions, the mob will be back, and not just in Serbia and Montenegro.

Richard Bassett is Eastern Europe corres- pondent of the Times.