Tens of thousands of Yugoslavs have protested the ethnic war that threatens to pit brother against brother, while weeping mothers demanded the federal army release their sons from uniform.
In the Croatian capital of Zagreb, 20,000 people took to the streets Thursday to call for peace and protest the army's involvement in fighting between Croatian security forces and Serb rebels in Croatia.About 10,000 mothers of conscript sons, some chanting "Serb army, get out!" besieged a federal army building in Osijek, center of the Croatian region of Slavonia where fighting has been particularly intense.
"What is happening in our country is barbarian," said Dragica Naseva, a leader of an informal mother's group from Macedonia. "This is a senseless war. If the mothers of Yugoslavia had the power to decide, the fighting would have been over long ago."
More than 50 busloads of mothers from Croatia and the republics of Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina traveled to Belgrade to petition army generals to release their sons from service.
Angry women, wearing badges saying "Give Us Back Our Sons" over a dove symbol, said police harassed them as soon as they entered Serbia.
Meanwhile in Washington, the United States said Serbian leaders and the Yugoslav military bear a "growing responsibility for the country's tragic descent toward civil war" and called for an immediate cease-fire in Croatia.
In a strongly worded statement, the State Department said Thursday it was "seriously concerned" by the violence in Croatia.