Eyewitness: Belgrade's night of celebration

About 200,000 people poured onto Belgrade's streets

By Dusan Radulovic in Belgrade

"It took me 40 minutes to find a parking place", says Milan, happy that he has still managed to arrive on time in the square in central Belgrade, and happy that the rally is late starting and nothing is happening yet on the stage.

Tonight he doesn't care that the price of petrol is one German mark per litre and his monthly salary is only 110 marks.

I came from Sarajevo just to vote

Ozren, 41

Milan's wife Vera has a big smile on her face. She is waving a baby rattle to symbolise Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's fate - that he has been "broken like a rattle" in the presidential elections.

Trying to move through the crowd of about 200,000 to get nearer to the stage, three girls with big stickers for the Otpor youth opposition movement on the backs on their jackets, chant the slogan "He's finished".

Soon the people around them join in and the whole crowd chants the same slogan.

"I came from Sarajevo just to vote", says Ozren, aged 41, a Belgrade-born doctor who has spent the last 10 years abroad like hundreds of thousands of people, mostly young, who have fled Serbia to look for work somewhere else.

He had planned to go back to Sarajevo two days ago but has decided to stay on "until they recognise the election results".

"I just want to see their faces when they say Kostunica is the winner and that there isn't going to be a second round," he says.

Dragana, 34, dancing and singing along with the music coming from the big loudspeakers on the stage, says that she's "still afraid".

Long after midnight ... central Belgrade is still full of people

"The authorities could do something stupid now, knowing that they've lost the elections. I'm not sure they'll give up power peacefully."

Her husband Veljko reassures her. Taking her in his arms he lifts her up saying: "What can they do against this crowd?"

Long after midnight when the rally is over, after six hours of celebrations, central Belgrade is still full of people.

Cars move slowly through the crowd honking their horns, national flags flying from their windows.

Leaving the square is a group of policemen. Their faces reflect their relief that, tonight, they didn't have to do anything.