Yugoslav minister found hanged

MADRID, Spain -- Yugoslav federal health and labour secretary Miodrag Kovac has committed suicide in a Madrid hotel room.

The Yugoslav embassy in the Spanish capital ruled out any link with the attempted suicide on Thursday of former Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic.

Stojiljkovic had been indicted for war crimes and shot himself after parliament passed a law allowing extraditions to the United Nations tribunal in the Hague.

Kovac, 53, an MP from Montenegro who was attending a U.N. conference on ageing in Madrid, was found hanged with a belt in the bathroom at 1:40 a.m. (2340 GMT).

Beside him was a suicide note addressed to his family in Serbian saying: "I trusted too much in my own colleagues," the Yugoslav Ambassador to Spain, Privo Indjic, told CNN.

The note had added that he was "always dedicated to Montenegro."

Kovac, a former heart surgeon, had been under pressure in the Montenegrin media with elections coming up, Indjic said.

"During the conference on ageing that he was attending, Mr. Kovac seemed a bit unhappy. According to his own words, he felt especially bad about recent reports in the Montenegrin papers," Indjic told radio B-92.

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Mesa Dragojevic, chief of staff of the secretariat of the Yugoslav government, told CNN that Kovac had recently denied accusations that he had illegally imported large quantities of medicines into the country.

Kovac's body was found by staff at the Eurobuilding Hotel in north-central Madrid after a fellow Yugoslav member of a conference delegation became concerned he was unable to raise the minister.

He is believed to have killed himself shortly after midnight.

The Yugoslav embassy could not rule out that Kovac had killed himself for political reasons, its spokesman told The Associated Press.

The minister, who was just below cabinet rank. was not a war crimes suspect, AP said.

Former Serbian interior minister Stojiljkovic attempted suicide on Thursday

Kovac, who was married with three children, was in Spain attending the U.N. Second Assembly on World Ageing, which was ending on Friday.

He was a cardiovascular surgeon who had graduated at universities in Belgrade and Prague before becoming head of surgery at the Montenegro Clinical Hospital Centre.

Kovac was elected to a parliament as a member from Montenegro, the junior Yugoslav republic. His full title was state secretary for labour, health and social policies in the Yugoslav federation.

He was a lifelong member of the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro (SNP) a junior partner in Yugoslavia's government coalition.