Milosevic's choice

Sensibly, Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, has backed away from confrontation with thousands of protesters outraged by his annulment of opposition victories in recent municipal elections. Compromise, including a belated recognition of the original election results, may be Milosevic's only hope for long- term political survival.

So long as he remains in power, the West is obliged to work with him to carry out the Bosnian peace agreements. But it has no interest in his defying the will of his own people, as expressed not only in the polls but for the past two and a half weeks in the streets of Belgrade. The Clinton administration is right to demand that he now open a dialogue with opposition leaders.

Although the opposition movement has not so far spread beyond the urban middle class and students to factory workers and other groups, it has shown enough strength to persuade the Milosevic regime to shift tactics. Warnings from Washington and other foreign capitals against a violent crackdown also helped encourage the Serbian government's retreat.

Belgrade has stopped trying to ignore the daily mass marches and has allowed independent radio stations to return to the air. It has also made a bid to win back public support by paying overdue stipends to students and pensioners and cutting consumer electricity rates.

There are encouraging signs that Milosevic may be prepared to yield on the substance of the dispute as well. A Belgrade electoral tribunal has now called on Serbia's supreme court to review the cancellation of the original results in that city, one of 14 major towns where opposition slates appear to have won.

In a further conciliatory gesture, several officials associated with the most blatant electoral shenanigans were dismissed.

If the Serbian government is now edging toward compromise, it is because intensified repression carried heavy risks. A forcible crackdown, as Washington pointedly reminded Belgrade, would wreck Milosevic's efforts to rehabilitate his international image and prolong Serbia's painful economic isolation.

It was Milosevic's earlier sponsorship of armed insurgences in Croatia and Bosnia that brought on that isolation in the first place, including a long period of international economic sanctions.

Even if the regime were prepared to accept renewed isolation, repression might not long slow the pressure for political change. The democratic transformation that began sweeping through Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 has finally reached the Balkans.

Last month, voters in neighboring Rumania threw out the post- Communist government led by Ion Iliescu. Like Milosevic, Iliescu was an agile former apparatchik who had managed to survive Communism's fall.

A similarly backward-looking regime in Bulgaria also suffered a recent setback at the polls, and in Croatia the old order may not survive President Franjo Tudjman, now gravely ill.

Serbia badly needs both political and economic reform. But the need for political change is more urgent. Establishing democratic legitimacy could bring increased foreign investment, making economic adjustment considerably less painful.

Milosevic can adapt himself to the requirements of democracy, recognize the opposition's victories and subject his own power to a fair vote in presidential elections next year. Or he can seek to maintain his old dictatorial ways by force. The second course would only delay, at considerable cost, a change that is sure to come.

-- The New York Times