His politics have been compared to Hitler's and Stalin's, his speaking style to Mussolini's - and his ruthlessness to Saddam Hussein's.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is a demagogic dictator who has a secret police force and controls his nation's media.

He believes Serbs are a higher race cheated throughout history by their enemies.

His terrible, single-minded goal is to see all Serbs united in one ethnically pure country.

To accomplish this, he engineered the four-year civil war in Bosnia, using torture and terror as his chief weapons.

The conflict killed 200,000 Muslims and drove two million from their homes.

Though reviled abroad, Milosevic is a hero at home.

Now he has brought NATO bombs raining down on his war-torn country because of his unbending stand on the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Critics say without doubt, he will use the bombing campaign to further fan the flames of nationalism.

"He's the slickest con man in the Balkans," said Warren Zimmermann, former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia.

Milosevic, 58, a prim former banker, lit the nationalist flames on June 28, 1987, when he spoke at the anniversary of the Serbs' defeat in Kosovo by the Turks in 1393.

When Serbs scuffled outside the meeting hall with local cops, Milosevic stepped onto a balcony and declared: "No one will beat you again."

He became a hero.

Portraits portraying Milosevic as a medieval knight - the kind that might have fought the Turks - appeared in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade.

Milosevic created a new nationalistic Socialist Party in Serbia, describing himself as a man who would lead the Serbs to their ethnically pure place in the world.

Two years later, in 1989, he became Yugoslavia's president.

Milosevic moved swiftly, creating a loyal secret police force and taking control of the nation's media.

He revoked Kosovo's self-governing status, which led to protests in the province. That allowed Milosevic to crack down even more.

Meanwhile, the media he controlled churned out propaganda describing Serbs as the most oppressed people on earth.

In 1991, with the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs began the four-year civil war against Bosnian Croats and Muslims.

Milosevic maintained the fiction that he wasn't involved in the conflict.

But in reality, he not only supplied the Bosnian Serb army but also masterminded an ethnic-cleansing campaign against Bosnian Muslims that employed rape, torture and mass executions.

The new conflict in Kosovo began in February 1998 when Albanian separatists gunned down four Serb policemen.

Shrugging off calls for restraint, Milosevic retaliated with a scorched-earth campaign that has left more than 2,000 Albanians dead and 300,000 homeless.

"In 10 years in Congress, I have never met anybody who's so obstinate and so immovable. He won't budge an inch." said Rep. Elliot Engel (D-Bronx), who has made several trips to Yugoslavia.

"He's a rogue. He's charming. He sits you down and offers you a Cuban cigar and he'll talk as long as you want - but he won't budge an inch."

-- Andy Geller - 3/25/99