Yugoslav general predicts `historic victory'

The commander of the Yugoslav army's Pristina Corps forecast a "historic victory" over NATO and denied reports that thousands…

The commander of the Yugoslav army's Pristina Corps forecast a "historic victory" over NATO and denied reports that thousands of soldiers had deserted.

His remarks came after a Yugoslavian newspaper report that anti-war protest were gathering momentum in the country.

Maj-Gen Vladimir Lazarevic told Serbian state television: "We really have a chance for a glorious victory against the greatest world power. We really have a historic chance to win."

Addressing his troops in a forest, the general said: "If we do not do this in this generation, then our children and our grandchildren will not have peace."

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Dismissing claims of desertions totalling 13,000 troops, which the television said were made in NATO leaflets dropped on Kosovo, he said: "The Serb soldier has never betrayed his country and will not do so with this sacred Serb land."

Gen Lazarevic said NATO's brutality and the crimes it had committed in the campaign were without precedent but had succeeded only in provoking a humanitarian catastrophe.

NATO warplanes, he said, had used explosives equivalent to over six times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Gen Lazarevic accused NATO of mass destruction of schools, hospitals, foreign embassies and prisons - a reference to attacks in which civilians have been killed in what NATO has described as accidental bombings through technological or intelligence failures.

He said his corps, from the provincial capital of Kosovo, had defeated "the ethnic Albanian terrorists".

Meanwhile, the independent Montenegrin daily Vijesti reported yesterday that thousands have been taking to the streets in three towns in southern Serbia to demand the withdrawal of Yugoslav army reservists from Kosovo.

The newspaper, describing the weekend protests in southern Serbia as "dramatic", said the largest demonstration took place in Krusevac, where discontent first surfaced a week ago. Smaller rallies were also reported in the towns of Aleksandrovac and Raska.

Protests were planned also in a fourth town, Prokuplje, after the bodies of 11 local soldiers killed in Kosovo were returned to their families on Saturday, the newspaper said.

"They do not want to go to Kosovo any more," the paper said in a banner front-page headline.

Vijesti said "several thousand" protesters in Krusevac demanded the withdrawal of all Yugoslav soldiers from Kosovo. They said local men would ignore a recent call-up and would refuse to go the front. Some 1,000 reservists allegedly deserted from Kosovo last week and returned to their homes in Krusevac and Aleksandrovac.

Vijesti said there were rumours that 1,000 more reservists from the area had also deserted, but had been stopped by the military from reaching the two towns as they crossed the mountains of Kopaonik.

A Vijesti correspondent in Krusevac said the crowds had shouted "You will not cheat us any more" and "Give us back our sons". People then surrounded a Yugoslav army general, named as Stojimirovic, who was visiting the town from Nis.

In separate reports, Vijesti said citizens of Raska had demanded that reservists from their town should be replaced by soldiers from the capital, Belgrade or from Pozarevac - a personal stronghold of President Milosevic.

Residents said the Yugoslav general in charge of the war in Kosovo had visited Raska on Sunday to try to placate the demonstrators.

One resident said Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic had promised that men who were sick or needed to provide for their families could stay at home, but that others would have to go to Kosovo to fight.

Gen Pavkovic visited Krusevac last week and reportedly failed to convince local men to return to the front.