More worrying to Milosevic than utilities problems are Monday's protests by families of army reservists. After promising over the weekend that on-leave reservists who were needed as breadwinners wouldn't be redeployed, the Yugoslav army Tuesday warned that men who failed to return to their units by noon would face a court-martial. "The reserves are furious because they'd been promised that they would be replaced in Kosovo," says Anastasijevic. "They feel they've done their part and now it's somebody else's turn, but logistical problems caused by the bombing have prevented Belgrade from doing that. Now the army has a new problem -- if it doesn't carry out its threat, that will be bad for discipline and morale, but if they do start punishing people it may be even worse." Although it may be growing, the anger of the reservists hasn't reached a point where it might feature in Milosevic's strategic calculations. NATO Tuesday agreed to assemble a 50,000-strong peacekeeping force to enter Kosovo once an agreement with Belgrade is achieved. But with the alliance turning down British demands that a ground invasion be considered, Milosevic remains content to wait for NATO to sweeten its peace offer.
Despite Army Mutinies, Milosevic Hangs Tough
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NATO may be bombing Belgrade back to the Stone Age and some Yugoslavian troops are feeling mutinous, but alliance predictions that President Milosevic is about to crack are probably premature. Belgrade's water reserves dropped to 8 percent Tuesday as NATO kept up its bombing campaign, and the city's residents are having to become accustomed to life without electricity. "Life in Serbian cities is getting very difficult," says TIME Central Europe reporter Dejan Anastasijevic, "but people are not blaming Milosevic; they're blaming NATO. And even if they did blame Milosevic, there's not much they can do about it because Serbia isn't a democracy."