Two international initiatives were launched yesterday to counteract the effects of Serbia's recent law banning relays of broadcasts by foreign radio and TV stations.

And Serbia's independent media also met to co-ordinate their own fight against the new law.

Jiri Dienstbier, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in former Yugoslavia, said he would propose that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should set up its own TV network as a part of the planned international verification mission in Kosovo.

"There is one-sided information on both sides, and independent media are needed to help resolve this," he said after meeting in Belgrade yesterday with editors of three banned independent Serbian dailies.

The aim of the network would be to promote communication not only with ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, but the whole population of Serbia.

And the international radio network in Bosnia - Free Elections Radio Network, FERN - said that it would make available to its affiliate local stations near the border with Serbia programmes in Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian from the Voice of America, Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe, the Prague-based US surrogate broadcaster.

This would give some listeners in neighbouring Serbia the option of again hearing programmes from these foreign broadcasters, which can no longer be rebroadcast legally by independent stations in Serbia.

FERN is a radio network financed by the Swiss government and supported by the OSCE.

It began operating in Bosnia in July 1996 to provide balanced coverage for the subsequent elections in that country.

It is one of a series of international efforts to promote pluralism in the Bosnian media.

Other projects there include the Open Broadcasting Network, OBN, which has operated for just over two years, and receives finance from various Western organizations, including the OSCE and NATO.

This year Radio Free Europe also announced plans for joint broadcasts with over 20 radio stations in Bosnia-Hercegovina, to whom it would provide satellite facilities.

The initiative to reach listeners in Serbia using FERN stations in Bosnia introduces an element of internationalization which the authorities in Belgrade are likely to seize on to accuse Western organizations of infringing Serbia's territorial integrity.

The broadcasts from the network in Bosnia are mostly likely to be on FM transmitters.

They are intended more as a symbolic gesture of support from the West for Serbia's independent stations and extending the programming choice available to their listeners.

There is a history of similar previous direct broadcasting initiatives to former Yugoslavia.

From 1993 to 1994, Radio Brod, a radio ship transmitting news on medium wave to the former Yugoslav republics, operated from the Adriatic Sea.

It was run by the French group "Droit de Parole" and funded by the European Union and UNESCO, among others.

Those broadcasts ended after the EU withdrew financial support.

Meanwhile, the editors of Serbia's remaining independent broadcasters and newspapers yesterday launched a campaign to collect signatures in support of revoking the media law, and plan legal action to challenge whether the new law is constitutional.

Representatives of the Belgrade radio stations B92 and Studio B, together with the Association of Independent Electronic Media in Serbia and Montenegro, will also produce a joint programme for simultaneous transmission by all the independent radio stations.

As B-92 reported last night, the whole campaign to oppose the media law is being coordinated under the joint slogan: "Remaining silent is not the Serb way."