For the handful of embittered Serb intellectuals, journalists and politicians who dreamed of seeing their country become a European social democracy, Winston Churchill's cynical second World War remark has special resonance. "Are you planning to live in Yugoslavia after the war?" he asked the British agents who warned him that support for Tito's partisans would doom the country to Communist rule.

President Clinton sees himself as the heir of Winston Churchill, but the moribund Serb opposition to Mr Slobodan Milosevic say the US-led war is creating a xenophobic, totalitarian Yugoslavia.

If the war goes on too long, "everything open-minded, all the small roots of democracy, will be destroyed," Mr Radomir Diklic, head of Beta news agency, says. His is the last independent news organisation in Belgrade. "We will be like North Korea," he predicts darkly.

Mr Diklic and his colleagues blame the US for long considering Mr Milosevic a "factor of stability" in the Balkans. "They made this monster, not us," he says. He accuses Washington of turning a blind eye to election fraud in Yugoslavia and maintaining ties with Mr Milosevic because he was "a useful dictator".

Yesterday, the Serb government replaced Mr Veran Matic, the director of the B-92 independent radio station that was shut down on March 23rd, with Mr Alexander Nikavecevic, a loyal supporter of Mr Milosevic. B-92 started as a students' station that grew out of the protest movement against Mr Milosevic.

"The closing down of B-92 was a break with all the alternative voices," Mrs Ljubica Markovic, the editor-in-chief of Beta says. "It is a very clear sign to the West."

No Yugoslav can in good conscience approve of the bombing of his own country, Mrs Markovic explains. Until March 24th, groups like the Open Society Foundation and the Alliance for Change, a coalition of three small political parties, struggled to organise domestic opposition to Mr Milosevic.

"All of these groups have only one message now," Mrs Markovic says. "Stop the bombing."

In November and December 1997 and January 1998, protest marches attended by up to 500,000 created hope that Mr Milosevic's rule would soon end. Each time the crowd swelled to more than 200,000, the police refrained from intervening.

Some predicted that Mr Milosevic and his wife, Mrs Mira Markovic, would meet the fate of the Ceaucescus.

It was Mr Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Party (SPO) and now a Deputy Prime Minister, who always managed to calm the crowd. At the time, the SPO was part of the opposition coalition. But when the opposition decided to boycott an early parliamentary poll called by Mr Milosevic, Mr Draskovic opted to go it alone, without his allies. Today, Mr Draskovic is the Serb politician always seen on satellite television. But he is regarded by the remnants of the pro-Western, democratic movement as a turncoat.

They bitingly call him a Golub ("pigeon") in memory of the March 1991 day when, during earlier protests, he climbed to the balcony of the National Theatre and "left droppings all around him."

MR Draskovic joined a coalition government with the parties of Mr Milosevic, Mr Milosevic's wife, and Mr Vojislav Seselj's Radical Party, a racist and xenophobic extreme right-wing group whose militia, the White Eagles, helped to "ethnically cleanse" Bosnia.

While setting potential rivals within the regime against one another, Mr Milosevic was able to claim that Yugoslavia enjoyed a multi-party system, and all those who had boycotted the election were marginalised.

As a reward for abandoning his opposition to The Great Manipulator, Mr Draskovic's party was given the lucrative internal trade ministry, the information ministry, two deputy premierships, and control of Belgrade Town Hall.

Mr Draskovic's former allies sneer at him for organising daily war-time pop concerts while people are being killed in NATO bombardments.

In Mr Diklic's opinion, "the West did a good job for Milosevic" by launching the war against him. "If you ask ordinary people today, they say he is a God, that he is defending them. He has become a symbol of the country, which is awful."

NATO's war strategy could not have suited the Yugoslav president better, he adds: no bombing of civilian targets; no ground troops; a little "collateral damage" to show that people are suffering and a screen behind which to finish off the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Mr Milosevic's rehabilitation of the Albanian leader Mr Ibrahim Rugova, with whom he signed an agreement on Thursday, shows the Yugoslav president's shrewdness. "Rugova and Milosevic need each other," Mr Diklic says.

"Under Rugova's orders, Albanians boycotted all elections since 1990. If they had not, Slobodan Milosevic would not be in power." Yet Mr Diklic believes Mr Rugova is sincere in his belief that Albanians can obtain their rights through peaceful means.

"With their support for the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Americans spoiled everything," he adds. "From the moment that the KLA asked for the bombing, they were considered a fifth column. They are, purely and simply, the enemy."

For NATO to continue bombing Yugoslavia against the wishes of the people it is allegedly trying to help - the political opposition to Mr Milosevic and Mr Rugova, a signatory of the Rambouillet peace accord and the "president" of the Kosovo Albanians - is acutely embarrassing.

Pope John Paul II offered NATO an easy way out this week, when a Vatican envoy proposed an 11-day Easter ceasefire through the Catholic and Orthodox holidays. NATO rejected the idea immediately.

"Once again, the US is bombing a half-ruined country that will not back down," Mr Diklic says. "It has nothing to do with us; this is all about NATO's credibility. NATO will fight to the last Albanian. On the ground, no one can doubt it will get worse and worse for the Albanians."

Mr Diklic is only half joking when he asks us to visit him later in prison. The day the war stops, he says, "all of us who think differently from the President will fight again".

When Yugoslavia is no longer under bombardment, he hopes Mr Milosevic will have to respond to an important question: why did his policies lead to war?