(14 Feb 1997) Natural Sound
Protests continued in Serbia Thursday with a rally staged by opposition supporters.
Vuk Draskovic, one of the opposition leaders, told ten thousand protesters that each day under the present regime was "like a year lost for Serbia."
Earlier, thousands of students marched over the river into New Belgrade to protest against state-run TV and its biased, pro-Milosevic reporting.
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is facing a new challenge every day.
His concession to recognise opposition local election victories has done little to defuse the tension on the Belgrade streets.
Rather, the move seems to have given further encouragement to his opponents.
The opposition movement is not losing any momentum now they have secured this victory - which they see as the first of many possible concessions.
The rally in Belgrade Thursday evening continued the wave of protests that has rocked Serbia for the past 86 days.
What began as a revolt against the election fraud has blossomed into a movement demanding radical democratic reforms in Serbia.
Opposition leader Vuk Draskovic told his supporters that every day under the present regime was the equivalent of a lost year in Serbia's history.
President Slobodan Milosevic had warned earlier of swift action against pro-democracy protesters, but resistance to his autocratic rule appeared to be spreading to Serbian television and other previously loyal state mouthpieces.
Milosevic said at a meeting of new members of his reshuffled government that "energetic measures" were needed to stop the wave of crime sweeping the country.
His warning was a clear allusion to the opposition, which he and
his influential neo-Communist wife, Mirjana Markovic, have branded as traitors, criminals and foreign spies.
But his remarks did nothing to dampen the mood of the protestors in Belgrade, who continue to turn out in their thousands for the daily demonstrations.
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