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Army reservists seeking back pay protest in Nis on Saturday  MESSAGE BOARD: Rebuilding Kosovo  IN-DEPTH SPECIAL: Focus on Kosovo

July 18, 1999
Web posted at: 10:20 p.m. EDT (0220 GMT)

In this story: Anti-Milosevic forces remain divided Army reservists suspend protests over back pay U.N. chief in Kosovo seeks protection for Serbs RELATED STORIES, SITES

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Amid increasingly vocal rallies calling for the ouster of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the army's chief of staff warned in reports published Sunday that the opposition lacks the support of the Yugoslav people.

"It is the task of all of us now to preserve the stability of the country because there are many sold souls, Western vassals, who want to take power by force and take the country into a new catastrophe. But they won't have any support from our people," Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic was quoted as saying in the government-controlled newspaper Politika.

Ojdanic is one of five top government officials, including Milosevic, who have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in connection with atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

In his comments, the general seemed to refer to Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic and other opposition leaders who have organized anti-Milosevic rallies for the last two weeks. The statement was the first by Ojdanic since the protests began.

Ojdanic spoke out during a visit to Nova Varos, a town 170 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Belgrade in Serbia's heartland, a region that has seen an increasing number of public protests.

Anti-Milosevic forces remain divided

Although the opposition remains relatively weak and divided, its leaders hope to capitalize on the misery Serbs suffered under the 78-day campaign of airstrikes NATO began because of Milosevic's policies in Kosovo.

More than 15,000 people showed up in Kragujevac on Saturday in the first rally organized by Serbian Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic since the NATO bombing ended. The crowd looked twice as large as that attending another protest led by Djindjic a few days earlier.

Some Serb protesters think unity among opposition leaders is necessary to bring down Milosevic.

"I would like all of them to be together, because that is the only way to win," said one.

But some supporters of Draskovic, Serbia's best-known opposition leader, dismiss the idea.

"To form a coalition with Djindjic would be the same as getting married for the third time with a woman who has already left you twice," said one.

Draskovic has shifted between alliance with the opposition and cooperation with Milosevic. After leading some of the strongest anti-Milosevic protests in the past, Draskovic briefly served in the government before he was fired for openly criticizing Milosevic during the Kosovo conflict.

Army reservists suspend protests over back pay

On Sunday, Yugoslav army reservists ended three days of protests in southern Serbia, but warned of more radical action if they are not paid for serving in Kosovo during the NATO airstrikes.

A recent promise by the Third Army's chief of staff called for the wages to be paid in three portions, the first at the end of this month.

"I wouldn't like to see this time wasted, because then all 11,000 reservists who have been mobilized from Nis and the surrounding area would take to the streets to demand their rights in more radical protests," Miodrag Stankovic, the leader of a local veterans association, told protesters.

Stankovic emerged as leader of the reservists during three days of blockades of the central square in Nis, 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Belgrade.

The numbers attending the gatherings, which police had warned against but not prevented, had dwindled from around 500 on Friday to about 100 reservists on Sunday.

Reservists began demonstrations in Serbia soon after Yugoslav security forces were withdrawn from Kosovo under the peace settlement that ended the NATO airstrikes last month.

The government, struggling with an economy devastated by sanctions and mismanagement even before the bombing, printed money to pay the first groups of army protesters. It was not clear how it would meet the remainder of the payments.

A government crackdown against ethnic Albanians, who made up most of the population of Kosovo, prompted the NATO bombings, which forced Milosevic to accept a peace plan and pull his troops out of the Serbian province, now occupied by NATO-led peacekeepers.

Serbia is the larger of the two republics remaining in the Yugoslav federation. The other is Montenegro.

U.N. chief in Kosovo seeks protection for Serbs

As Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency reported more revenge attacks on Serbs in Kosovo, the U.N. representative in Kosovo on Sunday asked for more international help to protect innocent civilians.

Bernard Kouchner made his remarks after talks with Kosovo Serb leader Momcilo Trajkovic and Bishop Artemije appeared to signal particular concern about the fate of minority Serbs in the province.

International peacekeepers have been hard-pressed to prevent returning ethnic Albanian refugees from carrying out revenge attacks against Serbs since Serbian forces pulled out of the province.

More than 60,000 Serbs -- about 25 percent of their total number in Kosovo before the bloodshed -- have since fled the province.

Tanjug carried more accounts of alleged attacks on Kosovo Serbs, including the killing of a married couple near the town of Gnijlane in southeastern Kosovo. It identified them as Zegra and Bozidar Lalic, but gave no other details.

Correspondent Alessio Vinci,The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.