Tension is ratcheting tighter across Yugoslavia as Mr Slobodan Milosevic faces the threat of losing the presidency in key elections next month.
Voters will choose between several candidates in the race for the presidency, which pits rival candidates and allows for a runoff second round, if no one initially takes more than half the votes.
It is the first time there has been such a direct vote for president, and analysts are already describing the September 24th poll as "a referendum on Milosevic".
The strongest challenger to Mr Milosevic is a candidate backed by a group of 18 opposition political parties which call themselves the Democratic Opposition of Serbia.
Their candidate is a man barely known in the West, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, a Belgrade academic and lawyer with a reputation for integrity, who heads the Democratic Party of Serbia, one of the smaller opposition groups.
Unlike other senior opposition leaders, Mr Kostunica stayed in Yugoslavia during the whole of the bombing and strongly criticises NATO. His brand of nationalist, anti-American rhetoric has long found an echo among Serbia's people.
Opinion polls in Yugoslavia should be treated with scepticism, but recent results from the Institute of Social Sciences showed Mr Milosevic would achieve 23 per cent of the vote, lagging behind Mr Kostunica who, it said, would get 35 per cent. Another poll put support for Mr Kostunica at 30 per cent against 25 per cent for Mr Milosevic.
Part of Mr Kostunica's attraction in Serbia is his anti-Americanism. "It takes a great deal of arrogance to say that promoting democracy in Yugoslavia is a long-term US goal," he said. "Democracy in Serbia is Serbia's goal and no one else is entitled to it. The real US goal is obviously a further break-up of Yugoslavia," he recently said.
Mr Kostunica's candidacy puts Mr Milosevic on the back foot, for the regime has sought to portray opposition leaders as American and NATO lackeys who are traitors to their country.
Federal and local polls take place alongside the presidential. These are highly important for the future of Montenegro. The pro-West coalition of parties supporting the Montenegran President, Mr Milo Djukanovic, who want to break with Mr Milosevic, has declared it will boycott the vote, moving Serbia's unstable sister-state further toward independence and perhaps to the brink of war.
In local elections Mr Milosevic needs to reclaim local authorities that fell to a coalition of opposition parties in 1996. The most important test among the town halls will be if he can reclaim the capital, Belgrade.
A sign of the political atmosphere in Serbia is the expectation surrounding a football match at the Red Star ground tomorrow. Fans at the last game shouted the anti-Milosevic slogan: "Save Serbia and kill yourself, Slobodan," provoking heavy clashes with police.
The government has since banned all sloganeering at games, and many expect clashes if fans at a game against Kiev again chant slogans against the regime.