Belgrade ‘Rings In’ Year, Literally

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  Under a sky dotted by fireworks, tens of thousands of festive anti-government demonstrators poured into downtown Belgrade on Tuesday to ring in the New Year--literally--with hand-held alarm clocks set at midnight. The clocks, they said, symbolized that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s time is running out.

For his part, Milosevic used the New Year’s celebration to send a rare, televised message to his citizens, promising better salaries, more investment and vague reforms. He did not mention that his government is under attack for election fraud after annulling the election victories of his opponents in more than a dozen city halls.

“The coming year will be a year of reforms, of property and structural changes,” Milosevic said, painting a rosy picture of prospects for recovery despite increasing international isolation triggered by his refusal to concede electoral defeat.

In an indirect allusion to the ongoing political crisis, Milosevic added that his government performed “very well” in the past year in the face of “external and internal obstructions, especially in the last few months.”

In the streets, meanwhile, the mood was more festive than political. Many of those who donned fur coats and goose-down parkas against the frigid cold and packed into the central Republic Square said they were regular participants in more than six weeks of protest against Milosevic. Others joined for the first time, saying they wanted to see the gala.

“Let us finish in ’97 what we started in ‘96,” opposition leader Zoran Djindjic urged the crowd early today, as the celebration dragged into the wee hours.

Unlike previous demonstrations, which have been increasingly hemmed in by heavily armed riot police, the gathering Tuesday night had an official permit. There was no significant presence of police, and the gathering was peaceful.

That seemed to contribute to a relaxed and jubilant mood. People wore glittery party hats, carried balloons and sparklers, blew whistles and set off smoke bombs.

For the first time in more than a week, parents brought their children, a sign of confidence that police, this time, would not intervene.

“I would not have brought her any other time,” Zorica Smederac, a high school teacher, said of her 10-year-old niece. “Everybody is very optimistic. It seems [the regime] is starting to give in.”

Revelers, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder in the plaza, listened to songs from famed Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica’s film “Underground,” an anti-Communist movie about a Serbian family that hides in its basement during World War II and ends up staying there through Yugoslavia’s turbulent recent history.

Earlier in the week, Kusturica lent his support to the opposition, saying he had to stand up for people demanding their minimum rights.

At midnight, the revelers set off fireworks and opened bottles of champagne, and their alarm clocks rang out.

“I doubt Milosevic will leave [because of] these kinds of demonstrations, but it is worth doing it so that the whole world sees that Serbia wants change,” said Branislav Kostresevic, 26, a land surveyor who, like half of Serbia’s city dwellers, is out of work.

Kostresevic, who was with a group of buddies taking swigs from a bottle of vodka, participated in the futile student protests of 1991 and has seen many in his generation simply abandon the country out of frustration.

“Five years ago--that was the right time to leave this country and avoid this hell,” he said.

Students distributed fliers Tuesday night calling for “a happy New Year, a free New Year.”

Also Tuesday, a delegation of European Union diplomats came to Belgrade to try to persuade Milosevic to accept an international finding that he should restore the Nov. 17 elections he annulled.

Milosevic refused to meet with the envoys. Still, the delegates met with mid-level officials and felt encouraged.

Milosevic must respond this week to the finding, issued by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, following a mission to Belgrade to review the election results scrapped by Milosevic.