Ex-Milosevic ally, liked by West, now acting Serb PM
13 Mar 2003 12:33
BELGRADE, March 13 (Reuters) - Nebojsa Covic, thrust into the role of acting Serbian prime minister after the killing of Zoran Djindjic, was once an ally of ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and later joined reformers who ousted him.
As deputy prime minister in Djindjic's reformist government, the 44-year-old former Belgrade mayor won praise from Western governments for the way he helped end a local Albanian guerrilla insurgency which gripped southern Serbia east of U.N.-run Kosovo in 2001.
Instead of deploying the heavy-handed tactics Milosevic used in a failed attempt to quell a 1998-99 uprising in Kosovo, he helped engineer a peace deal under which rebels lay down their arms in return for improved rights for the Albanian community.
He is also the government's point man for Kosovo, the majority Albanian province in southern Serbia which came under international administration in 1999 following 11 weeks of NATO air strikes to halt Serb repression under Milosevic.
Covic, a former top basketball player and now an avid basketball fan, is one of four deputy prime ministers in the government and it remains unclear how long he will remain acting prime minister.
He has openly opposed some of Djindjic's reform policies in the past and supported former Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who ran against a candidate backed by Djindjic in December's failed presidential election.
A politician who does not shy away from firm action, he reportedly brought a truck laden with weapons to Belgrade on the eve of the October 5, 2000 uprising which ousted Milosevic. He went into hiding after police issued an arrest warrant.
Married with two children, he was a rising star in Milosevic's Socialist Party and Belgrade mayor from 1994 to 1997.
But Covic, who stood behind Milosevic during government-organised rallies, was expelled from the party after he conceded defeat to the opposition in elections for Belgrade city hall in the winter of 1996-97. Djindjic took over as mayor.
Covic subsequently formed the Democratic Alternative, one of the smaller parties in Serbia's ruling DOS alliance.
A former first division basketball player who briefly headed the Yugoslav Basketball Association, he has a masters degree in mechanical engineering and heads a metal packaging company, which owns a basketball club.