Serbia's controversial opposition leader Mr Vuk Draskovic at the weekend half-heartedly joined growing calls for the resignation of President Slobodan Milosevic, but refused to clearly dissociate himself from the regime he once fiercely criticised.
Addressing a rally of 15,000 people on Saturday in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac, Mr Draskovic refused to join forces with other opposition groups who seek to topple Mr Milosevic.
Unlike the coalition Alliance for Change, dominated by a former mayor of Belgrade, Mr Zoran Djindjic, who was the first to demand Mr Milosevic's resignation, Mr Draskovic, head of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), insists that the formation of "transitional governments" in Serbia and Yugoslavia should be top priorities.
Within three to six months, the governments should get international sanctions lifted and pave the way for a return of Serb refugees who fled Kosovo fearing ethnic Albanian revenge attacks, Mr Draskovic said. And elections at all levels which would follow would surely put an end to Mr Milosevic's regime, he argued.
His statements surprised many and left thousands who gathered in Kragujevac's main square deeply puzzled.
Mr Draskovic, who was jailed twice in the past decade, insisted that the Yugoslav president should not go to prison, as many of his opponents are demanding. "The SPO will not allow that," Mr Draskovic warned, adding that "changes in Serbia should not be a simple exchange of prisoners.
"We can do nothing with hatred and revenge . . . Every other way would lead to civil war," Mr Draskovic said.
Walking a tightrope between the opposition and the regime, Mr Draskovic still appeared to be undecided which way to go.
In the past 10 years, he led the most massive anti-Milosevic protests, but joined the president's government in February, backing decisions that led to NATO's bombing campaign and the virtual loss of predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo.
While Mr Draskovic was sacked as Yugoslav deputy premier in April after criticising the official policy, his SPO kept ministers in the federal government. Mr Draskovic himself was never strongly attacked by Mr Milo sevic's powerful state media.
Once nicknamed "the king of street protests", Mr Draskovic had been reluctant to join anti-regime rallies, launched in late June. The rally in Kragujevac was the first Mr Draskovic organised. He had led huge protests in Belgrade in 1996 and 1997 against alleged vote-rigging.
Mr Draskovic's mass protest came only two days after the Alliance for Change held a rally in the same town that attracted more than 10,000.
Mr Draskovic called all the parties, both from the opposition and those in power, to back his programme of national and state salvation.
Showing clear disappointment with Mr Draskovic's position, one alliance leader, Mr Vladan Batic of the Christian Democratic party, accused him of "being the bridge that will allow the regime to rid itself of any responsibility [for the current state of affairs] without any pain."