Tuesday, March 30, 1999

YUGOSLAV PRINCE CALLS ON WEST TO HALT BOMBING

Criticism: the exiled monarch tells Christopher Lockwood of his doubt

The man born to be king of Yugoslavia called on NATO yesterday to end its bombing of the country he has never ruled and seldom seen.

Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic, son of King Peter II, said air raids were killing innocent people and bolstering President Slobodan Milosevic.

The Prince has lived all his life in exile after his birth in Claridge’s hotel in war-time London. His parents had fled there from the Nazis, and, in order that he could one day take the throne, his father and the British Crown agreed to recognise the rooms as Yugoslavian territory for a day. Only one born in Serbia can be king.

He hopes that one day he will be able to take the throne and help heal the wounds of Yugoslavia from the Belgrade palace now occupied by Milosevic.

The Prince believes that he might play the role of a constitutional  monarch at a time of transition, like his cousin King Juan Carlos of Spain. A great, great, grandson of Queen Victoria, and a godson to the present Queen, he is related to most of Europe’s crowned heads.

He says Milosevic has systematically destroyed his country over the past decade. Yugoslavia has been isolated, racked by war, dismembered and bankrupted. But now bombing from the West has pushed Yugoslavs into rallying round the man responsible for the decline.” I strongly condemn these air strikes. They are killing people and consolidating the position of Milosevic”, the Prince said yesterday.

“The West has always misjudged Milosevic. They’ve dealt with him for 10 years. Every foreign minister has been to see him. And now the raids are increasing his support. Now we are dealing with a very dangerous man in a very dangerous way.”

The Prince professes to hate both “terrorists” of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the “terrorists” of Milosevic’s secret police operating in Kosovo.

Although many Serbs claim Kosovo as a historic heartland, he would back a peace plan granting the province autonomy. “There should be democracy for everyone – for Albanians as well as Serbs. Serbs and Albanians have lived together for centuries.” 

But he believes that the air strikes make it harder for a peace deal to be achieved. 

He is deeply skeptical about NATO’s role. 

“NATO is manifesting itself in a new form,” he said. “As far as I remember, it was designed as a defensive, not offensive, organization. But now it has brushed the United Nations aside to bomb. I don’t see an end game to this. The bombing has provoked a new round of war. What is NATO going to do next?”