KOLUBARA MINE - Serbia's most important coalmine gave an impression yesterday of a country on the verge of a meltdown.
In the middle of the night, General Nebojsa Pavkovic, chief of staff of the Yugoslav armed forces, came to visit Kolubara - and pleaded in vain with the miners to return to work.
Threats were made, but one of the most powerful men in Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was forced to offer blandishments, too, including increased salaries and a plea for the Army not to lose its electricity.
Zoran Cvetanovic, a member of the strike committee, argued that Pavkovic's sudden appearance in the early hours was a clear sign of President Milosevic's weakness.
"We didn't expect Milosevic already to play his ace."
In Milosevic's Yugoslavia, chiefs of staff are not used to pleading; they make threats, and make good on their threats. But times have changed.
Now, a chief of staff must go out in the middle of the night to talk to the workers - and be rebuffed.
To make things worse, after Pavkovic's departure Milosevic's former chief of staff, Momcilo Perisic, entered the mine to show solidarity with the miners.
The miners asked Pavkovic to pass on to Milosevic their fear of civil war.
Cvetanovic said: "He agreed to do that. The Yugoslav Army is our army. It should not turn against the people."
The mine, which employs a total of 17,000 people, was in a state of tension yesterday, with animated meetings throughout the day, in advance of a police or Army assault that some feared might yet come.
Branislav Pavlovic, a 52-year-old miner, said: "We never had the courage to change our Government, like other countries do. Many people are still frightened of bloodshed. But we must have change."
At different branches of the Kolubara mine, scattered across a wide area near Lazarevac, south of Belgrade, meetings continued throughout the day, informing the strikers about latest developments, and what they should do next.
Strikers at one branch of the mine claimed that Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party was trying to round up enough people to get the equipment going "in order to show it on RTS" - a reference to Serb state television news, which has comically sought to pretend that this week's general strike does not exist.
Slobodan Jacimovic, one of the mine directors, was said to have been suspended because of his refusal to put pressure on the strikers.
This was one of a string of similar stories of defecting loyalists in recent days, including local police chiefs who refuse to carry out orders.
Danas newspaper reported yesterday that police in Backa Palanka, north of Belgrade, had refused to dismantle a protesters' barricade. Most dramatically of all, a police commander was said to have led a student demonstration through Belgrade.
Slobodan Milosevic is still eager to issue veiled or unveiled threats, as he did in a televised speech on Tuesday, talking of the danger of foreign invasion, and the danger if the Opposition is allowed to win. "My conscience would not be clear if I did not tell my people about its fate ... " he warned in an address to the nation.
But at Kolubara few seemed frightened by such threats.
"There's a psychological war against us," one miner said. "But they won't succeed."
Police and protesters met in isolated clashes in parts of Serbia yesterday. For example, on the road leading south from Belgrade towards Kolubara, police were reported to have broken up barricades, injuring protesters.
But in many areas police have been, from Milosevic's point of view, alarmingly neutral, even dangerously friendly to the Opposition.
Reports from Uzice in south Serbia said police cars were hooting in solidarity with the demonstrators.
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