World Notes YUGOSLAVIA

With eight nationalities, three religions, five languages and two alphabets, the polymorphous nation of Yugoslavia has long bubbled with ethnic rivalry. One of those conflicts now threatens to erupt into violence. Angry Serbs are staging increasingly militant demonstrations against their countrymen in Kosovo who are ethnic Albanians. The biggest demonstration so far took place Sept. 3, as 70,000 protesters gathered in the town of Smederevo, near Belgrade, to demand action by the central government.

The Serbs complain that the Kosovo Albanians have launched a campaign of terror and rape to drive them out of the heavily Albanian province. Says Radomir Smiljanic, a well-known Serbian writer: "The harassment of women has become so common that Serbs have to accompany their wives and daughters to work and school." Officials in Kosovo vehemently deny the charges, and non- Serbs elsewhere agree they have been wildly exaggerated by the Serbian press.

Last week the Serbian Communist Party organization and its popular boss, Slobodan Milosevic, defied a government demand that the protests be stopped. Late in the week the government in Belgrade attempted to defuse the increasingly tense standoff by agreeing to send a Serbian police unit into a Kosovo village to help federal authorities protect the local Serbs.