Football: Red Star threaten Uefa Cup boycott

RED STAR BELGRADE, faced with a ban on home matches, threatened yesterday not to play their Uefa Cup game against Lyons next Tuesday. "We either play in Belgrade, or we won't play at all," said Dragan Dzajic, Red Star's general manager.

The threat of Nato air strikes against Yugoslavia - unless it complies with international demands over Kosovo - forced European football's governing body to bar Red Star from playing the first leg of their second round Uefa Cup match at home.

Red Star officials said Lyons refused to play the first leg match in France instead of Belgrade, and Uefa offered Maribor (Slovenia), Vienna (Austria), Timisoara (Romania) and Budapest (Hungary) as the possible sites of the first-leg match instead of the Yugoslav capital.

Red Star say the danger of Nato air strikes is gone as Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav President, on Tuesday accepted all international demands for the solution of the Kosovo crisis.

"There are no real reasons why we can't play the match in front of our fans," Dzajic insisted.

Uefa said it would wait until later this week to decide if a similar ban was needed in the Cup-Winners' Cup tie between Partizan Belgrade and Lazio.