[ALBSA-Info] Milosevic Regime Rejected In Chaos

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Milosevic Regime Rejected In Chaos

By SLOBODAN LEKIC

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - As Belgrade tumbled into disarray Thursday, gangs 
of young people, many of them drunk, roamed the parliament building, ripping 
out TV sets and smashing portraits of Slobodan Milosevic. 

They grabbed leather-covered chairs, computers- even coat hangers - as flames 
licked from the ground-floor windows and choking smoke spread through the 
dome-topped 1932 building. 

Outside, demonstrators dodged bursts of tear gas and overturned police cars 
burned fiercely. 

The ornate structure was the first bastion to fall to the demonstrators in 
their massive rallies to support Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition leader 
who claims he triumphed over Milosevic in presidential elections on Sept. 24. 

The onslaught on the parliament began when a cordon of riot policemen fired 
tear-gas grenades to clear the entrance of the building. 

Opposition leaders appealed for calm, but the crowd, led by street toughs 
from Cacak, an industrial town in central Serbia, surged back. They taunted 
the officers, dozens of whom began deserting the ranks, taking off their 
helmets, shields and bulletproof vests and joining the demonstrators. 

Suddenly, police still inside the building fired tear gas and stun grenades. 
Instead of backing down, the crowd swarmed forward, breaking down doors and 
windows and setting a dozen patrol cars and wagons on fire. 

A man ran out of the building carrying a coat hanger. ``This is a souvenir of 
the revolution,'' he exclaimed. ``I can tell my children that I took part.'' 

Another man carried out a TV set and placed it on a trash can. He plastered a 
sticker on the screen with the words ``he's finished,'' and stood back to 
admire his work. 

``Now they can watch what is going on here,'' he said, pointing to other 
protesters. 

Offices of the leaders of Milosevic's Socialist Party were ransacked, 
furniture and files tossed through the windows. Legislators' chairs were 
brought out into the street. People sat on them, sipping plum brandy. 

Window panes popped as they overheated from the flames in the building, and 
shards of glass rained on people below. 

Marble staircases and statues in vaults were littered with opposition 
posters, stickers, slogans. TV monitors in wide hallways were ripped off from 
their platforms, leaving wires dangling. 

People sprinted down the long corridors, in and out of the sumptuous 
wood-paneled rooms and conference halls, checking behind every pillar for a 
policeman in hiding. 

In the offices of the Federal Electoral Commission, demonstrators found sacks 
full of ballot papers marked with Milosevic's name. They were dumped into the 
street below. 

While firefighters tried to extinguish flames in one part of the parliament, 
protesters were busy setting wooden walls ablaze elsewhere in the building. 

Waving flags and still shielding their eyes and noses from the tear gas, 
people stood on the buildings windowsills and balconies - joyous, triumphant 
and exhilarated. 

There were also moments of terror. A man trapped in a ground-floor room began 
to suffocate from smoke. Protesters outside yanked heavy iron rails from the 
window and managed to extricate him. 

Later, a group of protesters unreeled a fire hose and used it to fight the 
ground floor flames. They were joined by several fire trucks and the fire was 
eventually brought under control. 

The parliament building went up in 1932 as a symbol of democracy in the new 
state of Yugoslavia that had risen from the ashes of World War I and the 
Austro-Hungarian empire. It then became German headquarters during the World 
War II, then a rubber-stamp legislature under the communist rule of Marshal 
Josef Broz Tito. 

In the 1990s it was transformed into a stronghold of Milosevic's nationalist 
regime. 

Now, as night fell, it had become the smoke-blackened backdrop to a huge 
rally at which Kostunica was once again appealing to Milosevic to give up 
power peacefully.