VOICES FROM BELGRADE

	June 10, 1999
	Boston Globe correspondent Kevin Cullen discusses reaction to the end of the war from Belgrade

PHIL PONCE: Joining me by phone is Kevin Cullen, the European correspondent for the Boston Globe. He's been in Belgrade the past four weeks. Kevin, we've seen these pictures of the celebrations in Belgrade. What are people telling you about why they're celebrating? KEVIN CULLEN: Well, about 24 hours ago, the pictures you're referring to were shot. There was an initial sense, I think, of some euphoria, but I think those pictures are misleading in that there weren't that many people on the streets. Those are people who just happened to be out. This is a cafe society, and a lot of people would have been out anyway. For all intents and purposes, the bombings really stopped about a week ago. There was one more night of bombing in Belgrade. But since President Milosevic accepted the G-8 principles, it more or less was over. The difference today I think is that it's really kind of sunk in to people. It was much more subdued, I would say, out there on the streets talking to people. There was no sense of celebration, that's for sure. I mean, what happened last night was mostly gunshots by police and soldiers flying their guns in the air. Even antiaircraft fire was seen in the air. I could see it outside my window last night late. And today people were I think -- more people were -- I mean, you could find two sorts of folks in Belgrade. There are, like, some of the housewives and older ladies I met at a green market were talking about basically agreeing with President Milosevic that this was a victory, that they had won because they had stood up to the most powerful military alliance in the world and were not crushed. Then you get - PHIL PONCE: Actually, just enduring the onslaught and enduring the bombardment is seen by some people as a victory in itself? KEVIN CULLEN: Absolutely. And that goes right to the -- this is a country or a nation that traces its nationhood to a famous defeat in Kosovo in 1389. So the whole sense of losing but losing nobly means something to people here. And so that is something that which Milosevic -- we have to remember, this is the fourth war the Serbs have lost in ten years. Milosevic is probably the only leader in this century who has lost four wars and is still in power. And he can do that -- he's able -- obviously, after his speech, we talked to people who agreed with him. "This was a great victory," an old woman told me while she was buying vegetables. She thought that Kosovo would remain part of Serbia. And when you try to say, well, there was never a question about it being removed from Serbia, nobody in the West -- none of the Western allies really believed that an independent Kosovo would help Europe or international security, you get blank looks, because that isn't what's talked about here. PHIL PONCE: Kevin, have you talked to anyone -- Kevin, have you talked to anyone who believes that Serbia flat-out lost, and that this is seen as a complete defeat? KEVIN CULLEN: The word that most people have used here is capitulation. And then they -- a lot of people make the distinction that they don't see it as a capitulation by the army; they see it as a capitulation by their government. They don't think the government should have got involved in it in the first place, that it wasn't worth -- it wasn't worth the loss of life, but more importantly, the loss of infrastructure here. Driving around Yugoslavia, driving around Serbia, it's just every major city has been hammered. Kosovo --I mean, Belgrade is interesting, because it was mostly surgical strikes in the sense -- aside from the Chinese bombing, the Chinese embassy bombing, which NATO said was a mistake, aside from a hospital that was hit here, in which at least four patients were killed, most of the buildings that were hit here are government buildings. They're some of the biggest and most beautiful buildings in Belgrade are destroyed. But, you know, right across the street there's a building standing that wasn't hit. It's when you get out into the countryside in places like Novi Sad and Nis, which is the headquarters of the third army, which was in Kosovo, you see the incredible devastation of these smaller cities. And the question that everybody was asking here is, "how are we going to rebuild this? We don't have the money." And there's - PHIL PONCE: Kevin, before we get into -- let's talk about Slobodan Milosevic's speech. This is the first speech he'd given since the bombing began. How are people reacting to his speech? KEVIN CULLEN: Well, I think it depends. Like I said, you can find people that would accept anything that Milosevic says and thinks, and believes him and thinks that he's the greatest. Belgrade is a pretty sophisticated city. He is not popular in Belgrade. His party is not the most popular party here in Belgrade. And this is a center with a lot of intellectuals, a lot of professors, a lot of people in business, and they are folks that would be a little more thoughtful. I mean, getting people to talk on the record here is not as easy as you would think because it is a secret society. There are an awful lot of what you would call secret police or interior ministry police people worried about. But, I mean, most people when they let down their guard say, "hey, you know, what Milosevic said, he had to say, and we understand where he's coming from, but nobody's going to tell me that you can bomb my country for 78 days and say that we won." But, I mean, the other thing here is that the overwhelming -- everybody that I've talked to since I've got here thinks that NATO was wrong, that their problem was with Milosevic, but that it was the people who suffered during the war, and it's the people who will continue to suffer. This is a country that could take, you know, 30 years to rebuild, if it's lucky, to get back to where it was before the bombing started. And so there's an awful lot of bitterness here that if Milosevic was the problem, he certainly isn't the one who will suffer the most. PHIL PONCE: Kevin, do you see any signs that Milosevic's days might be numbered? KEVIN CULLEN: You know, I can only tell you what ordinary people think, and most of them think that nothing is going to happen in the short term, that the war's over, that there's going to be all this withdrawal and all these things for the next few weeks. And then, like Washington, this is kind of a country that shuts down during August, and no one quite thinks anything will happen in July and August. But everybody says -- one man said to me today, "the fall will be in the fall." They think that that is when the opposition parties, who are notoriously fractured here, can perhaps, removed from the war, the trauma of the war, can start raising questions about, "hey, who got us in this trouble in the first place?" And "we need to rebuild our country, and the Americans and the Europeans will not give us aid as long as he's in." It's a pervasive argument, but it's one that can't be made, people say, because, like I said, a lot of people are still very angry at NATO. That anger will probably dissipate over the next few months, and then they will be left with a destroyed country, a destroyed infrastructure. And how will they get the means to replace it? PHIL PONCE: Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe, thank you very much for joining us.