SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC - SERBIA

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06569673
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: March 16, 2022
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2016
• Case Number: F-2016-01087
• Publication Date: December 7, 1995

Approved for Release: 2016/06/10 C06569673
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SERBIA
Slobodan MILOSEVIC
(Phonetic: meeLOHsheveech)
President (since 1989)
Addressed as: Mr. President
Slobodan Milosevic widely regarded as an ideologically and tactically flexible politicians working to transform
his international image from that of a hardline Serb nationalist and accused war criminal to that of a Balkans
peacemaker. Milosevic has put increasing pressure on recalcitrant Bosnian Serb leaders to agree to a settlement
since August 1994, when prodded by the international community he imposed an economic and military blockade
on the Bosnian Serbs. He subsequently used the Bosnian Serbs military setbacks in mid-1995 to force the
Bosnian Serb leadership to accept him as their chief representative to future peace talks. Despite their criticism
that he sidelined them during negotiations at the Dayton conference and that he ignored their territorial demands,
he extracted their formal promise to abide by the agreement at a meeting he convened in Belgrade in late
November.
To further burnish his peacemaker image and to avert Yugoslav Army clashes
with Croatian forces, Milosevic also successfully pushed embattled Krajina Serb leaders in Sector East into
signing a peace agreement with the Croatian Government in mid-November.
Marginalizing Opponents at Home . .
Virtually unchallenged as leader of Serbia and Montenegro, Milosevic has used his tight hold on the levers of
power and the disarray among his political opposition to successfully sideline rival politicians and
ultranationalists whom he regards as impediments to his efforts to improve Serbia's image abroad
as president of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS formerly the
Communist party), he has a broad network of political acolytes who maintain SPS political and financial control
throughout Serbia at the local level.
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Rise to Power
Milosevic was born in Pozarevac on 20 August 1941. His father, an Orthodox priest, committed suicide; his
mother, a hardline Communist, also killed herself, according to press reports. Milosevic joined the Communist
party at 18. After graduating from the Law Faculty of the University of Belgrade in 1964, he held a series of
economic-related party positions. Milosevic joined a Belgrade firm, Technogas, in 1968 and became its director
in 1973. In 1978 he assumed the post of president of the Bank of Belgrade, one of Yugoslavia's largest financial
institutions He returned to full-time politics as Belgrade party chief in 1984 under
the tutelage of his mentor then Serbian Communist party chief Ivan Shambolic Milosevic took over as head of
the Serbian party in 1986
In April 1987 he captured international attention with his dramatic appearance at a
protest meeting of Kosovo Serbs, where he initiated an inflammatory campaign to right the wrongs they were
suffering and issued demands for ra id progress toward full democracy and a market economy, according to press
Personal
eporting.
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Milosevic has visited the United States more than a dozen times. Since becoming President, however, he has
made few international trips.
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Milosevic speaks excellent, though accented English. His wife, Mirjana Markovic, has been describe
s his closest confidant and adviser; she has often used her bimonthl
magazine column to presage shifts in his official policy. The couple has a daughter and a son.
LP 95-113618
7 December 1995
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Approved for Release: 2016/06/10 C06569673