Belgrade Yugoslavia

Despite a tight security lid clamped on the Yugoslav capital Sunday, thousands of angry students took to the streets of Belgrade for a second wave of rioting in a daring challenge to the hard-line Communist leadership. Belgrade police fired tear gas at the crowd of at least 3,000 students who marched on the government-controlled television station early today after most federal tanks and troops had withdrawn, leaving the city under heavily armed guard by hundreds of police in riot gear.

Belgrade, Serbia It's Saturday night and I'm pressed against a crowd of singing, swaying, Champagne- and cocktail-toting Serbs outside one of the nightclubs on Strahinjica Bana, a street in the hip Dorcol district. A rock concert echoes up the hill, convertibles are thumping past, and the buzz feels more like Berlin, London or Barcelona than a war-torn capital in the Balkans. But raucous nights like these are normal in the hard-partying resurrected city that is Belgrade.

Serbian investigators said Tuesday that they have found 269 bodies in the biggest of five mass graves discovered since the downfall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last year. The graves are believed to hold victims of the Kosovo conflict. Excavation of the grave, located at a police compound in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica, was completed Tuesday after more than two months of work, the Belgrade District Court said in a statement. Another mass grave has been found at the site.

The Rolling Stones will rock Belgrade this summer even if their performance at the city's main racetrack distresses hundreds of horses stabled at the venue, concert organizers said Friday. "Preparations for the July 14 concert are going smoothly, there are no problems," said Dejan Maksimovic, a director of Music Star Productions, shrugging off concerns from an animal rights organization.

Amid profuse apologies from NATO leaders and a convulsion of outrage in China, shaken alliance officials admitted Saturday that they were unsure how their aircraft managed to strike the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade--an apparent error that ranks among the most serious mistakes of the 6 1/2-week air campaign over Yugoslavia. The embassy was hit in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

The Rolling Stones will rock Belgrade this summer even if their performance at the city's main racetrack distresses hundreds of horses stabled at the venue, concert organizers said Friday. "Preparations for the July 14 concert are going smoothly, there are no problems," said Dejan Maksimovic, a director of Music Star Productions, shrugging off concerns from an animal rights organization.

Milan figures he's safe, as long as he doesn't sleep at home at night. Like thousands of other young men in Belgrade, the 22-year-old Serb rotates among the homes of friends and relatives where the long arm of the Yugoslav army conscription force is unlikely to pluck him from his comfortable life. His reserve unit has been summoned to the front of Serbia's war against Croatian secession.

Forced off the air by the state's seizure of their studios, Belgrade's independent broadcasters were reduced Thursday to reading the nightly news from a balcony of City Hall. The news anchors had to pause each time they read out Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's name Thursday night, however, as a crowd of about 10,000 demonstrators below demanded the president's head. "Slobodan, save Serbia!" the protesters chanted. "Kill yourself!"

With bombs falling a bit closer Saturday, life's choices here are narrowing to a joyless few: Hide in bomb shelters. Watch propaganda on TV. Stay outside and watch the destruction. Most people stay at home, sequestered in apartments or bomb shelters out of fear of NATO's air raids. Radomir Mirkovic said Saturday that he spent the night chain-smoking on the corner of his street as missiles struck several targets on the outskirts of the city.

Political turmoil intensified in the Yugoslav capital Monday as more than 30,000 anti-Communist demonstrators flooded central streets after Serbian authorities were forced to relax a police siege. Workers angered by an acute and worsening economic crisis joined thousands of students who had battled with police overnight to shout their opposition to Serbia's hard-line leadership.

Serbian investigators said Tuesday that they have found 269 bodies in the biggest of five mass graves discovered since the downfall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last year. The graves are believed to hold victims of the Kosovo conflict. Excavation of the grave, located at a police compound in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica, was completed Tuesday after more than two months of work, the Belgrade District Court said in a statement. Another mass grave has been found at the site.

Forced off the air by the state's seizure of their studios, Belgrade's independent broadcasters were reduced Thursday to reading the nightly news from a balcony of City Hall. The news anchors had to pause each time they read out Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's name Thursday night, however, as a crowd of about 10,000 demonstrators below demanded the president's head. "Slobodan, save Serbia!" the protesters chanted. "Kill yourself!"

Each Friday, as the muezzin calls Muslims to prayer at a medieval mosque in old Belgrade, a few Serbs wait outside with the beggars, watching for ethnic Albanians. The Serbs are refugees who fled Kosovo after a NATO-led force took control of Serbia's southern province in June and the ethnic Albanian majority began to drive Serbs from their homes. Kosovo Serbs don't come to Belgrade's mosque looking for revenge. Real estate is on their minds.

After 2 1/2 days without water and electricity, residents of a 10-story apartment complex on the edge of Belgrade descended darkened stairwells late Monday with as many empty plastic containers as they could carry. A municipal water truck, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital's latest defense against NATO, had lumbered into the parking lot and opened its tap. As children scampered in and out of the truck's cabin, adults took turns at the thick black hoses protruding from the back.

Thousands of protesters continued to march on the U.S. Embassy here Monday, but China tried to rein in public anger and for the first time held out the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Sino-U.S. ties caused by NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. In a list of demands made by telephone to U.S. Ambassador James R.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen ordered a tightening Monday of the Pentagon's system of picking bomb targets after a misdirected airstrike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade exposed flaws in existing procedures. Cohen said the government will institute new, more reliable procedures for updating maps, for reporting on the location of embassies and for checking to ensure future airstrikes don't hit sensitive sites.

Thousands of protesters continued to march on the U.S. Embassy here Monday, but China tried to rein in public anger and for the first time held out the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Sino-U.S. ties caused by NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. In a list of demands made by telephone to U.S. Ambassador James R.

In this rocky Dalmatian hinterland where the war for Greater Serbia began three summers ago, the first rebels to dare challenge the word of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic are experiencing deja vu . Milosevic's faraway but high-profile power struggle with his Bosnian Serb proxy, Radovan Karadzic, replays a feud he choreographed with Croatian Serbs in early 1992, when the insurgents here refused to sign a U.N.

Amid profuse apologies from NATO leaders and a convulsion of outrage in China, shaken alliance officials admitted Saturday that they were unsure how their aircraft managed to strike the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade--an apparent error that ranks among the most serious mistakes of the 6 1/2-week air campaign over Yugoslavia. The embassy was hit in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

Officials' acknowledgment that the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade could have been the result of poor intelligence work may set off demands for a review of the entire data-gathering system used by NATO for its air campaign in Yugoslavia. U.S. and NATO officials have mostly ruled out mechanical or pilot error, believing instead that "the fault here is in the targeting. . . . The weapon hit what it was supposed to," said one U.S. official. "We just don't know why."