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Serbia's opposition launches second day of blockades |
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October 4, 2000
BELGRADE (AP) - Yugoslavia's army chief urged striking coal miners to return to work Tuesday, marking the first time President Slobodan Milosevic called on the country's military to help end current protests aimed at ousting him. Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic's unprecedented negotiating efforts to resolve the impasse at the Kolubara mine complex came as a second day of blockades, strikes and walkouts gripped Yugoslavia. After the general failed to resolve the impasse, the government struck back at opposition-run cities and towns across country by introducing four-hour power cuts allegedly triggered by the coal strike. By noon Tuesday, parts of capital Belgrade, as well as Serbia's second and third largest cities, Nis and Novi Sad, and three other towns lacked electricity. The army talks with the miners came in the wake of Milosevic's lambasting of opposition leaders, labeling them puppets of the West. The Yugoslav president's challengers staged protests around the country to press him to concede defeat in recent elections. Milosevic admits opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica won more votes but says he fell short of a majority, meaning a second round runoff will be held Sunday. The opposition insists that Kostunica won outright, a claim supported by the United States and Western European governments. The campaign of civil disobedience has involved hundreds of thousands of people and represented the most serious challenge yet to Milosevic's 13-year rule. The protests even reached his hometown of Pozarevac, where 20,000 massed Monday on main roads. By daylight Tuesday, convoys of trucks and private cars cut off traffic for two hours just outside of the capital, Belgrade. High school students blocked Belgrade's Slavija square with garbage containers - as police displaying batons watched - and tens of thousands opposition supporters marched to the statistics bureau, which counted the votes from last month's election. Marchers chanted, "Thieves! Thieves!" Belgrade police turned back two opposition convoys en route to block a key bridge north of the capital and the main highway leading to the west of the city - the first sign Milosevic's security forces were getting nervous. Another road leading into the capital was blocked near Mount Avala, just south of Belgrade, and barricades remained up around the central town of Cacak where almost all shops remained shut with signs "Closed Because of Robbery" - referring to Milosevic's stealing of the elections - posted on the windows. One of the country's main highways was also closed early Tuesday, the state Tanjug agency said. The state bus company rerouted regular bus lines to avoid the blockades. Police arrested two trade unionists in Belgrade's bus company Tuesday morning, radio Index reported. Striking railroad workers cut ties linking Yugoslavia's dominant republic, Serbia, with its smaller republic, Montenegro. Buses traveled only to the border of the two republics. Chris Patten, the European Union's foreign affairs commissioner, said Tuesday that he hoped the popular backlash against Milosevic will prove "irreversible." "I suppose he may be able to hang on by his fingertips but I think the writing is on the wall now," Patten said in an interview with BBC radio. "The brave people of Serbia have made their views pretty clear." The opposition called for people to rally in Belgrade on Thursday, in a final push to drive Milosevic from power. In a sign of the government's growing concern for stability, military police late Monday sent reinforcements to police units surrounding the Kolubara mine complex where 7,500 miners have put down their tools, the Beta news agency reported. Shortly after, Pavkovic entered the mine in the company of government officials to negotiate with the strikers. The talks went on until early Tuesday. Local radio in the nearby town of Lazarevac, 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Belgrade, reported that the general threatened the miners, demanding that they resume work immediately or face compulsory work orders. The miners refused to give in, the radio said. The mine is important because it supplies coal to a key Yugoslav power plant, Obrenovac, which is southwest of Belgrade. Pavkovic is considered one of Milosevic's most loyal allies and is extremely unlikely to have acted on his own. The military leader has close ties to the president, his influential wife Mirjana Markovic and her neocommunist party, the Yugoslav United Left. Milosevic also used the military in 1991 to put down massive street riots against his rule. Also Tuesday, some 400 workers in Nis' tobacco industry - a traditional Socialist bastion - walked out of the factory shortly before noon Tuesday. The workers marched through the streets in a somber procession, carrying a huge photograph of Milosevic, draped in black cloth as a sign of mourning. Behind the photograph, workers carried a mock coffin. "All Serbs know by now that Milosevic lost the elections - except the electoral commission," Nis' Mayor Zoran Zivkovic told 10,000 people gathered for a rally. In another central Serbian city, Kragujevac, a convoy of 100 cars left the local car plant to drive to Belgrade in protest. |