Milan Panic, an American businessman born in Serbia, was elected premier of the troubled remnants of Yugoslavia Tuesday. He pledged to stop the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina and introduce demo-cracy.
Parliament's election of Panic was seen as an attempt by Serbia to defuse Western and especially U.S. criticism of its nationalist policies that triggered Yugoslavia's civil war."My government will guarantee to the international community that it will do everything in order to turn this region into a factor of peace in Europe," Panic (pronounced PAHN-eesh) told parliament today before the confir-mation vote. "There is no idea worth killing for at the end of the 20th century."
The vote was 133-36, with two votes declared invalid.
Panic, a chemist by training, defected to the West when he was 25. He emigrated to the United States in 1956 and settled with his family in California, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1963 and making his fortune in pharmaceuticals.
Panic was nominated for the premiership by Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic.
The authoritative Borba daily said Milosevic would step down after Panic is approved. Milosevic faces strong criticism at home and abroad for escalating ethnic warfare in breakaway Yugoslav republics, where more than 17,500 have been killed and 2.2 million left homeless in the past 13 months.
The United Nations has punished Yugoslavia, which now consists of Serbia and Montenegro, with economic sanctions for backing Serbs fighting Croat and Muslim separatists in Croatia and Bosnia. The West has stepped up the pressure by sending warships to monitor the embargo.