BELGRADE -- Serbia and Montenegro purged its army leadership on Thursday as part of a drive to radically reform a force once vilified by the West for brutal tactics during the violent collapse of old Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The Supreme Defense Council, the union's top military body, removed or retired several well-known generals in what appeared to be the largest such change since pro-Western politicians ousted Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 after a decade of Balkan wars.

They included deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Vladimir Lazarevic, who headed the army in Kosovo during the 1999 war, and military intelligence chief Major-General Radosav Skoric, Reuters reported.

The official Tanjug news agency named 16 high-ranking officers, most of them generals, who were removed from their posts or pensioned off. "This is the biggest and the most serious purge since the departure of Milosevic," said military expert and former colonel Milorad Timotic. "It was necessary to establish a certain discontinuity with the policy conducted during Milosevic."

The Balkan country's ruling reformers are trying to bring the powerful army under civilian control and establish closer ties with NATO, four years after the alliance bombed Milosevic's Yugoslavia to stop Serb repression in Kosovo.

"It is necessary that we get a new, young, reformist team for the 21st century as far as the army of Serbia and Montenegro is concerned," said Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic.

Zivkovic said he backed the decisions by the Supreme Defence Council, whose meeting in Montenegro was chaired by President Svetozar Marovic of Serbia and Montenegro, the loose union that replaced the Yugoslav federation six months ago.

"I'm certain it will not jeopardize the security or the stability of our state," Zivkovic told reporters in Belgrade.

Defense Minister Boris Tadic, a key member of Zivkovic's Democratic Party, has signaled plans to cut the armed forces to about 50,000 troops from roughly 78,000 as salaries account for more than 40 percent of a cash-strapped military budget.

He has won Western backing for his reforms, but NATO has also made clear Belgrade must arrest the fugitive former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic and hand him to a U.N. war crimes court or show he is not in the country before upgrading ties.

The government requested admission two months ago to the Partnership for Peace scheme, NATO's basis for security cooperation with non-members grouping more than 40 states.

In another sign of changing times in Belgrade, Zivkovic said he discussed participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations during a visit last month to Washington and the U.N. headquarters in New York.

He said the political aim was "that an army which has until yesterday been accused of war crimes now becomes an army that will be the guardian of peace in crisis areas across the world".