Milosevic's campaign tactics

Reporting from Belgrade during Nato bombing

World Affairs Editor John Simpson gives his interpretation of the Yugoslav president's campaign tactics in the run up to the election.

Campaigning has begun for next month's presidential election in Yugoslavia. Anywhere else the government would be preparing to fight on its record. President Slobodan Milosevic is using different tactics - he is arresting foreigners.

The two British police instructors and two Canadians who were picked up while taking a holiday in Montenegro are Mr Milosevic's equivalent of an election manifesto.

The opposition in Serbia is, as ever, divided and confused

Rather like President Mugabe in Zimbabwe last June, he is basing his campaign on the notion that the outside world is trying to undermine the country and wants to destroy its government.

It did not work in Zimbabwe: the election there was a remarkable moral victory for the opposition. But the opposition in Serbia is, as ever, divided and confused. Mr Milosevic's tactics seem likely to work when the election is held on 24 September.

Serbia is two completely different countries, and Mr Milosevic presides unchallenged over one of them.

Bargaining tool

The educated, Western-oriented people of the main towns and cities are longing for something different; but in the rural fastnesses of the country, where the clock stopped somewhere in the 1950s and only the government's version of things circulates, Mr Milosevic rules secure.

Arrested: John Yore

So when his television service parades foreign prisoners on its main news programme and displays the banknotes (Deutschmarks, the accepted currency in Montenegro where the men were arrested) and maps of the area which were found with them, more than half the audience are likely to believe that their government has succeeded in protecting them from Nato's evil intentions.

These unfortunate tourists will be useful in next month's election

Fewer and fewer independent voices in the opposition media are left to point out that if anyone really were planning to kidnap President Milosevic they would surely come from Nato's special forces. A couple of British bobbies and two Canadians do not fit the profile quite so well.

Their lives should be perfectly safe. Serbia may have become an international outlaw, but it bears no other resemblance to, say, its new ally Iraq. No doubt President Milosevic plans to release the men at some stage; either to improve the atmosphere or as part of some eventual settlement.

Arrested: Adrian Pragnell

It has even been suggested that he might offer to exchange them for Bosnian Serb war criminals held at The Hague. But for now these unfortunate tourists will be useful in next month's election.

It will be fought on the basis that Nato hopes to overthrow the Yugoslav state, and that only Mr Milosevic can prevent its happening. Foreigners will be cast in the role that President Mugabe reserved for white farmers in the Zimbabwean election.

The difference is that there was a real, and impressive, opposition in Zimbabwe. President Milosevic has no such problem.