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BELGRADE (AFP) - Yugoslavia teetered on a razor's edge Thursday with President Slobodan Milosevic defiantly refusing to admit defeat in weekend elections and opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica gaining growing support and threatening mass strikes. The opposition camp, which drew a massive 200,000 people into the streets on Wednesday night to back Kostunica's claim to the presidency, won the backing Thursday of Serbia's influential Orthodox Church, its junior partner republic of Montenegro and nations as far off as Vietnam. "The Holy Synod calls on Kostunica and all those elected with him to take control of the state, its parliament and its municipalities in a peaceful and dignified way," Serbia's Orthodox Church said. Calling Kostunica "the elected president of Yugoslavia", the Synod also expressed hopes "the ruling parties will respect the will of the people," while Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic declared: "The presidential vote is over for us and Kostunica is a winner." Milosevic however stood firm in his refusal to accept growing domestic and international claims that Kostunica won the presidency outright last Sunday by taking more than half of the votes. In his first reported appearance since Sunday's presidential and parliamentary vote, Milosevic and leaders of his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) set out the "immediate tasks" to be carried out in organizing a presidential run-off called for October 8, the official Tanjug news agency said. The controversial call for a second round vote was issued early Thursday by an official election commission dominated by Milosevic backers. It announced a second round was necessary because neither candidate had won the election outright, crediting Kostunica with 48.96% of the ballots to 38.62% for Milosevic. Milosevic's SPS also said it and two allied groupings had won an absolute majority in parliamentary elections and would be forming the next Yugoslav federal government. But, bolstered by growing signs of domestic and international backing, the opposition denounced the claims of victory as "a joke" and threatened a campaign of passive resistance and civil disobedience to force Milosevic to admit his time was up. Zoran Djindjic, a spokesman for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), warned that if the election commission failed to "explain" its presidential ruling by 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), his group would "resort to different measures of pressure." "We are ready, together with the commission, to find the exact results ... We do not want this electoral crisis to escalate into a social crisis," he said. Djindic earlier told AFP that if Milosevic refuses to step aside, the opposition would launch massive civil disobedience. "We will call on the people to defend their rights, to put up general resistance and boycott the system, to come out on the streets - we call for everything to come to a halt until Milosevic goes," he said. "We call on the people not to send their children to school, not to go to work until Slobodan Milosevic leaves the stage. There will be no normal life until he leaves, since he has created the abnormal situation." Even one key ally of Milosevic, hardline nationalist Vojislav Seselj whose party is allied with the governing coalition in the Serbian and federal governments, joined opposition calls for the Yugoslav leader to step down. "For us, the elections are over. According to our data, Kostunica has won in the first round," Seselj told reporters. And in Moscow, a traditional ally of Serbia, visiting French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said Russia, Europe and the United States were basically in agreement on Yugoslavia and that "as for the Russians, they are not at all accommodating the Milosevic regime." Kostunica himself was adamant at the rally late Wednesday that there could be no denying the opposition had clinched presidential victory. "We have won, they have lost, no compromise is possible," he said to cheers from the crowd. Yugoslav army chief General Nebojsa Pavkovic meanwhile vowed his forces would never move against its citizens, whatever turn the country's political crisis took. However, he also pledged his loyalty to Milosevic and warned against foreign interference in the crisis. In Brussels, NATO officials said the alliance was taking pains to keep a low profile on the elections to avoid providing Milosevic with a pretext to declare a state of emergency. |
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