Protest at Solana's Belgrade visit

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is due to arrive in Belgrade on Thursday just hours after hundreds protested against the visit.

Solana and other senior European Union representatives are due to meet Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Street demonstrators on Wednesday burned an effigy of Solana dressed in prison clothing.

The protesters were reacting to the fact Solana headed NATO during its 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Many gathered outside government buildings in Belgrade, blocking city traffic, and later marched past the U.S. embassy, some throwing stones and eggs.

They carried banners such as "Solana - killer" and "Child killer - go to jail."

About 20 policemen stood in front of the embassy building to make sure the protesters did not come too close.

Some shouted "We will not give you Slobo" and "We love you Slobo" in support of ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Other demonstrators set off bomb alert sirens, or held candles.

"He should be ashamed, he doesn't have any shame. How dare he come here," pensioner Desa Brenovac said.

A senior official of Milosevic's Socialist Party, Branislav Ivkovic, came and kissed people in the crowd. Former Serbian PM Mirko Marjanovic also attended the rally briefly. The Socialist Party, now in opposition, and its former allies the ultra-nationalist Radical Party called on Wednesday for the arrest of Solana, branding him a war criminal.

Solana was among 14 Western leaders sentenced by a Belgrade court last September, when Milosevic was still in power, to 20 years in prison for NATO's air war -- launched to halt repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

"The criminal returns to the scene of the crime," said an open call for the protest published in the Glas Javnosti daily and signed by the Patriotic Alliance of Yugoslavia and an "anti-NATO committee."

But new Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic, a member of the pro-democracy bloc that ousted Milosevic last year, has described the trial of the Western leaders as a farce.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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