Police release Serb deputy PM

Peresic was arrested along with a U.S. diplomat he had met

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Police have released a Serbian deputy prime minister who had been arrested on suspicion of spying.

Momcilo Perisic, a former army chief of staff under Slobodan Milosevic, was detained on Thursday in a Belgrade restaurant but freed on Saturday without charge. Authorities have 30 days in which to decide whether to charge him.

Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic said the contents of Perisic's briefcase had been tampered with and that incriminating documents were planted inside by military agents.

Also arrested with him was John David Neighbor, a U.S. diplomat, and the incident has provoked an angry response from Washington.

The U.S. embassy in Belgrade has alleged that Neighbor was beaten by plain-clothes officers and interrogated over spying allegations during a 17-hour incarceration.

Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic described the arrest, during which a bag was put over Neighbor's head, as "a first-rate scandal with international consequences."

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U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We are forcefully protesting these actions by the Yugoslav military to the Yugoslav civilian authorities.

"In addition to our concerns about our diplomat, we're also concerned about this apparent move against an elected Serbian civilian official."

'Serious' crimes

Perisic's son, Igor, told the Associated Press on Saturday: "I firmly believe that ... he never committed any of the crimes they are accusing him of."

The arrests have exacerbated tension between Djindjic's reformist government and moderate nationalist Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica.

After a crisis meeting with Djindjic, Kostunica said the charges leveled against Perisic were serious.

"According to everything I have learned so far, and I repeat so far, the legality of the procedure itself, from the standpoint of domestic procedure, is not disputable," Kostunica said.

Perisic, a former general, was army chief of staff until November, 1998, when Milosevic fired him after he criticised the then president's policies in Kosovo.

In 1999, he said he had warned Milosevic he should avoid a war with NATO that the army could not win. Milosevic disagreed and fired him shortly before NATO launched its air war.

Perisic later founded his own party, the Movement for Democratic Serbia, joined the coalition that toppled Milosevic in 2000 and in January 2001 became a deputy prime minister in the Serbian government.

Croatia has indicted Perisic for war crimes and tried him in absentia for shelling the Adriatic city of Zadar, where he was a Yugoslav army commander in 1991 at the start of the Croatian war.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1996. Croatia wants him removed from office.

The U.N. war crimes court in The Hague has not published any charges against Perisic.