The World - News from Sept. 4, 1988

As many as 70,000 Yugoslavs massed in the town of Smederevo demanding a restructured Serbian republic, with Serbian Communist Party chief Slobodan Milosevic installed as a new Yugoslav strongman. The rally was the latest in a wave of Serbian nationalist protests encouraged by Milosevic in a campaign in the Serbian republic to regain control of the region’s autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. Serbia is unique among Yugoslavia’s six republics in having two autonomous provinces over which it has hardly any control. Serbs accuse ethnic Albanians in Kosovo of using terror tactics in an attempt to drive them out of the region.