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BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Oct. 25 (UPI) The special American envoy for the Balkans James Dobbins has told Serbian opposition leaders the United States is opposed to total abolition of sanctions against Yugoslavia for fear this move would play into the hands of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his regime, one of the leaders told Belgrade radio B2-92 Monday.
Vladan Batic, coordinator of the Alliance for Change (AFC), also said after talks with Dobbins and EU representatives in Budapest on Sunday evening that the envoy told the opposition leaders the State Department would provide firm mechanisms for the protection of the Serbian population in Kosovo.
Dobbins presented the results of an opinion survey conducted by a prominent American public opinion researcher, putting the Alliance for Change opposition bloc ahead of other parties and blocs in terms of public support. Batic described the results as "sensational."
Batric, who heads the Christian Democratic Party, said EU representatives signaled during the talks that the list of about 300 Serbian officials and persons close to the regime banned from entering community countries and the United States would be doubled.
Batric quoted Dobbins as saying the United States would coordinate its policies toward Serbia and Yugoslavia with its allies in the European Union. Dobbins appealed to the Serb opposition to close its ranks and expressed support for the program of its Prime Minister- designate Dragoslav Avramovic, who also attended the Budapest talks, Batic said.
Avramovic, a former central bank governor, was reported by one of the opposition leaders present to have asked for guarantees that credits would be provided for "setting economic processes going again to secure a stable life in a new, democratic Serbia."
Zoran Djindjic, leader of the AFC and the Democratic Party, traveled to Szeged, a Hungarian town close to the border with Yugoslavia, Monday to meet Dobbins and argue for the lifting of sanctions and for supplies of heating oil for Serbian towns as soon as possible.
Djindjic is quoted by the Belgrade newspaper Blic as saying: "They (the Americans) think people if they are freezing would take to the streets and demonstrate. We think this is nonsense for people would much sooner go out to demonstrate if they had heating at home and the children taken care of than if they had to go and cut wood in the forest or dig up parquet for heating."
A conspicuous absentee from the talks was Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement, which in a statement Monday accused the U.N. mission in Kosovo of "cooperation with Albanian extremists."