YU Merry-Go-Round

ALIJA IZETBEGOVIC, the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was voted personality of the year in the Radio Sarajevo opinion poll. He is followed by Bogic Bogicevic (federal presidency member from Montenegro) and Ante Markovic, ex prime minister. The same radio station gave its listeners the opportunity to elect the most unpopular personality as well: the winner was dr. Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs and the president of the Serbian Democratic Party.

BRANA CRNCEVIC, Serbian nationalist writer and the president of the Refugees' Organization, said at a lecture "Serbia Today": "We have heard that the quasi intellectual Serbian elite has fled from Belgrade. Serbian peacemakers are counting the dead Croats, not Serbs. They're deceiving people, and the people should be sobered up for their own good - the stick is the surest peacemaker.

DRAGOSLAV ALEKSIC, an SPS (Serbian Socialist Party) MP, has at the last closed session of the Serbian parliament discussed the peace initiatives and the spreading of defeatism: "Every moral and other support should be withdrawn from the peacemakers and their organizations. We should start with a serious propaganda campaign against them. If even that doesn't work, then we should behave as any other self- respecting country would: arrest them or put them before a firing squad if needed. If we don't shoot them, they will shoot us!"

Dr. JANEZ DRNOVSEK, an ex Yugoslav prime minister, has explained recently in one of the Slovenian magazines: "Unfortunately, we have, after all, had an acrimonious divorce. Many barriers will be erected and it will last awhile before normal relations are reestablished. But I can say even now that, when this unfortunate period is behind us, Slovenia will be very interested in restoring the relations in these parts, primarily the economic ones. The Yugoslav market is important and it would be foolish to abandon it for emotional reasons".

*Pick of the Week* *

"Danke, Deutschland", a Croatian thank you after the recognition (January 15, 1992)