Copyright 1988 The New York Times Company   
                                      The New York Times 

                           September 23, 1988, Friday, Late City Final Edition 

SECTION: Section A; Page 12, Column 4; Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 635 words 

HEADLINE: 70,000 Serbs Vent Anger at Officials 

BYLINE: By HENRY KAMM, Special to the New York Times 

DATELINE: KRALJEVO, Yugoslavia, Sept. 22 

BODY:

It was perhaps the largest of a rash of rallies held since July over the ethnic conflict in Kosovo, an autonomous province of Serbia south of here.

Serbs contend that Kosovo's ethnic majority of 1.7 million Albanians has terrorized a minority of 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins with the aim of driving them out of Kosovo and turning it into a purely Albanian province.

The plight of the Kosovo Serbs was the official subject of the demonstration. But much of the speeches, and many of the slogans that were chanted throughout the meeting, made evident why the rallies are viewed with great unease by the authorities.

Leaders Under Fire

In a country with an annual inflation rate approaching 200 percent, a sinking standard of living and rising unemployment, economic problems are as prominent as the deeply emotional ethnic problem of Kosovo. The speeches and slogans today reflected that.

''We don't want imposing villas, planes, yachts and private beaches,'' said Vojislav Radunovic, the union leader at the railroad car factory that is this town's main industry, alluding to recent disclosures of high living among Government and Communist Party leaders.

''You are not our comrades because you do not line up at dawn to buy 'people's bread,' '' he continued. He was referring to the low-quality bread that bakeries must provide at low cost to cushion the shock of repeated increases in the price of better bread.

''You don't share our destiny on the first, second or third shift,'' he said. ''You don't go down in the mine shafts; you don't climb high to build bridges. You are not our comrades.''

''The people should judge them!'' was a shout that rose from the crowd, which responded enthusiastically throughout the meeting. ''Thieves!'' the crowd roared. ''Down with those who sit in armchairs.''

One of the hundreds of homemade posters being held high proclaimed, ''Down with the socialist bourgeoisie!''

Yugoslavia is composed of six republics and two provinces, each with parallel government and party bureaucracies. Because of its federal governmental and party system, this nation of 23 million people has an extraordinarily high density of bureaucrats, and government and party officials have become targets of particular ire.

''Return all you have taken from the working class!'' the union leader continued. ''You with your privileged pensions, which are bigger than the pay of entire brigades of steelworkers, do you ever blush when you collect them?''

A Shift in Emphasis

Yugoslavs who have attended several of the rallies over the Kosovo conflict noted a shift of emphasis today, with speeches and slogans paying greater heed to Yugoslavia's economic plight than at earlier meetings. They explained this by Kraljevo's working-class character.

Nonetheless, the crowd's nationalist anger was equally evident. Serbs are Yugoslavia's largest population group, numbering more than eight million. Increasingly, they are expressing frustration over a perception that because of a distrust among fellow Yugoslavs based on their numbers they do not enjoy the share of national power that they feel should be theirs.

The mounting agitation over Kosovo is the clearest expression of the sense of Serbian frustration. ''Down with those who betray the Serbian people!'' a poster proclaimed. And many in the crowd burst into an old patriotic song: ''Who says, who lies, that Serbia is small?''

Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's party chief, commands mass support for his demand that the two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, be stripped of much of their autonomy and more fully integrated into Serbia.

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