BRITAIN yesterday threw its' weight behind 20,000 protesting Belgrade students, who kept up pressure on President Slobodan Milosevic as parliament prepared to reinstate opposition election gains.
Tanjug news agency reported that a parliamentary legislative committee had approved a draft law recognising the disputed poll results in advance of today's vote.
In central Belgrade, witnesses said at least 20,000 students thronged the streets, blowing whistles and horns, beating drums and waving flags in an 8km march around the city centre. They vowed to keep up their daily rallies, now in their 12th week, until all demands for political reform were met.
In more evidence of western displeasure with Mr Milosevic, the British ambassador to Yugoslavia, Mr Ivor Roberts, visited the student leadership and handed them two personal computers.
"There is a democratic deficit in the region and without democracy we are not going to see a stable Serbia and a stable region. We on our behalf try to do what we can to rectify this problem. We will support the democratisation of Serbia," he said.
"The Gonzalez report is not just the return of the election results but is also about free media, democratisation in Serbia. It was very disappointing and unhelpful that it took weeks and weeks for Mr Milosevic to launch his initiative."
Mr Roberts was referring to Mr Felipe Gonzales, the former Spanish prime minister who headed a mission by the Organisation for Security and Co operation in Europe last December which endorsed Zajedno victories.
Mr Roberts' show of support for the students was another blow to the embattled Mr Milosevic who once basked in international support after the Dayton peace accord he helped engineer ended the war in Bosnia in December 1995.
Now the West has turned against the autocratic president. France hosted the three opposition Zajedno (Together) coalition leaders last week, prompting an outcry by the Serbian state media, and the US has snubbed its onetime reliable negotiating partner.
The parliament is expected today to swiftly approve the bill reinstating opposition gains in municipal elections last November as ruled by the OSCE mission. Even if it does so, Zajedno and the students, sceptical of Mr Milosevic's sincerity, plan to keep up their daily demonstrations at least until their mandates are officially verified in about 10 days.
For weeks Mr Milosevic ignored the rallies that routinely drew tens of thousands of people on to the streets.
Then 10 days ago he ordered paramilitary police to clear central Belgrade, and in repeated baton charges scores of people were injured. But the action backfired as the West rose in condemnation and thousands of undaunted Zajedno supporters showed up again the next day.
The foremost casualty of the crackdown was the unity in the ranks of the police and his party, political sources said.
The bleak situation prompted Mr Milosevic last Tuesday to cave in and order the parliament to reinstate the opposition's election successes in 14 towns and cities, including Belgrade.
Already Zajedno leaders have expressed misgivings over Mr Milosevic's apparent climb down, saying not all the municipal results are listed in the draft law.
The Zajedno co-leader, Mr Zoran Djindjic, said Mr Milosevic had no intention of raising the white flag, but only of consolidating his strength and intending to further marginalise local councils by stripping them of their sources of revenue.