The Serbian opposition leader, Mr Zoran Djindjic, told thousands of anti-government protesters in Uzice in southern Serbia yesterday that a general strike and mass civil disobedience could bring down President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.
In another city in southern Serbia, a wall of club-swinging police barred thousands of anti-government protesters from breaking through to a police station where an activist was held.
With Mr Milosevic facing mounting pressure, Mr Djindjic, leader of the Democratic Party, addressed more than 5,000 people in Uzice, about 200 km south-west of Belgrade, and spelled out a plan to force Mr Milosevic out of office.
"We see the next two or three months in the following way: the people go onto the streets, the Church calls the people to go onto the streets . . . Serbia as a whole is in a state of civil disobedience in a general strike. He goes," Mr Djindjic said.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past week to call for Milosevic to step down. The Serbian Orthodox Church and trade union leaders have added their voices to the demands.
In Leskovac, 200 km south-east of Uzice, demonstrators confronted police yesterday, chanting: "Killers! Killers!", "You Betrayed Serbia", and "We want Ivan".
Mr Ivan Novakovic (34) is a local television editor who interrupted a key basketball match to publicise an opposition rally on Monday. Some 20,000 people attended and Mr Novkovic was sentenced yesterday to 30 days in prison.
Mr Djindjic, speaking in public for the first time since fleeing Serbia in fear for his life six weeks ago, called in his speech in Uzice for people to have courage and push for change.
"The Serbian nation has not lost its integrity in the world. This regime has lost it," Mr Djindjic said. "The world will help us but we must help ourselves first. This time we must go to the end. It's too late for talk," he said. "Be ready, have courage, we'll see each other soon."
Mr Djindjic hinted that the campaign could start as soon as next week. "I can envisage, in 10 days' time in Serbia, each day at the same time all churches ringing their bells to send the message, `It's time for you to go'," he said, to cheers.
"Every day in every town at a specific time, we would go out onto the street, not a single road would be passable in Serbia, and no town in Serbia would recognise the authorities any longer and we would all say `We'll stay on the street until you go'."
He said the goal was to set up a government of experts with the backing of the Orthodox Church and opposition leaders. An Orthodox priest at the rally said he had come to represent the Church, which has appeared divided by the protests.
A new government's main task would be to ensure people have enough to eat then to reintegrate Serbia with the world and make sure Serbs could return to Kosovo, Mr Djindjic said.
Thousands of protesters, chanting "Slobo Out", "Resign, resign" and "Rise Up Serbia" stayed put even when organisers had to hook loudspeakers up to a generator when electricity was cut off at the beginning of the rally.
There was a light police presence, but officials did not prevent the rally from taking place.
Leaflets floated down on the ground from an apartment block overlooking the square, first supporting the opposition, then from a "citizen" saying the speakers of the rally were puppets of the countries which bombed Serbia.
The protest is the second of a series of rallies planned for the summer by the umbrella opposition organisation Alliance for Change. The first was last Tuesday in Cacak, central Serbia, and police stopped some protesters from travelling to the town.
Deborah Charles reports from Belgrade:
Mr Vuk Draskovic, who in the past few years has switched from opposition leader to cabinet minister and back, called yesterday for immediate reform of the government.
Mr Draskovic, who is currently playing a balancing act between the opposition and the Milosevic government, said the federal government needed drastic changes to give it real power and represent both Serbia and its smaller partner in the federation, Montenegro. If those changes were made, Mr Draskovic said he would be willing to rejoin the government.
Mr Draskovic, who led huge anti-Milosevic street protests in 1996-1997, has not joined the opposition-led rallies which have drawn tens of thousands of people to the streets over the past weeks.
The opposition-run city council of Yugoslavia's second city, Novi Sad, yesterday became the first major city council to demand Mr Milosevic's resignation.
Students from Nis University in southern Serbia yesterday joined the calls for Mr Milosevic's resignation and said they would organise protests. "In a few days we shall organise an action entitled `Arrest me' because we believe only a spark is needed to provoke protests in our city", a student leader, Mr Aleksandar Visnjic, said.