Milosevic's wife hints at possible use of tanks to quell persistent protests

INTERNATIONAL Human Rights Day was marked in Belgrade by the refusal of the Yugoslav Federal Court to reinstate local election results, leaving the opposition Zajedno (Together) coalition with little legal room to manoeuvre.

Hopes are now pinned on the possibility of a round table conference between the opposition and the administration of President Slobodan Milosevic. The administration annulled the elections in which Zajedno won control of 15 out of 18 cities.

In one of the very rare comments on the situation from the pro-Milosevic side, the president's influential wife, Ms Mira Markovic, issued a statement yesterday in which she hinted that the protesters were risking a return to the demonstrations of March 1991 in which Mr Milosevic sent tanks on to the streets.

"You remember March 9th when the capital of our republic was almost destroyed and people were killed. Today those who are not satisfied with election results are behaving in a similar, perhaps more brutal way," she told the independent Beta news agency, adding that even if the protesters had a right to be disappointed with the annulment of the Belgrade results, they had over-reacted.

This last comment, which appeared to give some legitimacy to Zajedno's complaints, has been taken by some opposition figures as a hint at a future compromise.

Compromise was not on the minds of the crowd of over 100,000 who marched in Belgrade yesterday to begin the fourth week of nightly protests. Some 40,000 students marched in the early afternoon, leaving a copy of the constitution at the Serbian Supreme Court with a note instructing the judges to read it.

They then moved on to the Yugoslav parliament, whose opening session yesterday had been boycotted by Zajedno. There they shouted "Attack, attack, attack", holding the paper airplanes off their mythical "Serbian Air Force" at the ready.

Their loud jeers died down when Mr Novak Kilibarda, leader of the opposition from the republic of Montenegro, emerged with his seven deputies to show their solidarity. Waving their red "indexes", books in which grades are marked, the students' jeers turned to applause and the launching of the "air force" was cancelled.

The student protests have been bereft of all Serbian nationalist trappings and have had a decidedly pro-western bias. Every flag with the slightest western connotation has been commandeered: the Stars and Stripes has flown alongside that of the Confederacy, and the national flag of Brazil with the banner of the Fiorentina football club. In the evening many of the young protesters gather to discuss the day's activities under the tricolour on the wall of the city's only Irish bar, which is absurdly, named "The Three Carrots".

The protests of their elders which follow the student marches have a more nationalist character, with the Song of St George, the old anthem Boztja Pravda and the three-fingered orthodox salute given by men wearing the hats of the old Serbian army.

Last night, however, there was evidence of a broadening of representation among the protesters. Forty people from the ethnic Hungarian town of Subotica arrived and took their place in the march under a banner proclaiming their Magyar heritage; representatives of the Democratic Party of Serbia and the People's Party of Serbia joined the Zajedno marchers, and, more importantly, small groups from the transport workers' and the sanitary workers' unions brought their banners to the protests for the first time.

But the mass of Belgrade workers has stayed away and their apathy could yet thwart the opposition of victory.

. NATO foreign ministers approved a plan in Brussels yesterday to send between 25,000 and 30,000 troops to monitor the Balkan peace accords next year. They agreed that a stabilisation force should replace the current implementation force when its mandate expires on December 20th. NATO also "strongly deplored" the annulment of election results and called on Mr Milosevic to reverse the decision.