President Tadic sacks Serbia's top general

Dec 30, 2008, 11:42 GMT

Belgrade - Serbian President Boris Tadic on Tuesday sacked the army's top general, Zdravko Ponos, ending a rift that shook the defence system last week.

Tadic, who as president also serves as supreme commander of the military, appointed General Miloje Miletic as new head of the general staff, the president's cabinet said.

Ponos, 46, last week publicly criticized Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac, accusing his ministry in newspaper interviews of incompetence and corruption.

Tadic announced his decision a day after the supreme defence council met in a marathon six-hour session to discuss the Ponos- Sutanovac row.

The council is the top security body comprising the president, defence and interior ministers, the chief of the general staff and directors of the three civil and military intelligence agencies.

Sutanovac, who dismissed the allegations by Ponos, is the deputy chief in Tadic's Democratic Party, which leads the pro-European ruling coalition.

Some newspapers speculated that the row was orchestrated within the growing friction between Tadic and his deputy Sutanovac, who recently criticized the direction in which the DS was steered.

Sutanovac blasted Tadic's loudly advertised reconciliation with Slobodan Milosevic's Socialists party and the nomination of Mirko Cvetkovic as prime minster after the May poll.

Since the election triumph over the extreme nationalists, Tadic's political influence vastly exceeds the formal power carried by his office and Sutanovac is widely seen as his strongest challenger.