Croatia: Birthrate Problem

Croatia has been waging an anti-abortion campaign for a while now, with the motive of preventing the birthrate drop in Croatia. President Tudjman spoke of the need to multiply when he addressed the nation late last year and virtually ordered Croatian women to start having at least three children because that minimum would put a stop to the dying out of Croatians, by the year 2010. When a president urges propagation it's clear that he supports the movement headed by Don Anto Bakovic who is fiercely combatting abortion, urging taxes for single people, organizing Croatian youth outings so that young people can meet, and lashed out at health minister Andrija Hebrang who didn't give unreserved support to the anti-abortion movement and annulled the unilateral decision by Zagreb's Sisters of Mercy hospital doctors to stop abortions. The profile of the priest can best be summed up in his own words. "It's the gastronomic occupation of Croatia, and the assassination of the Croatian stomach," Bakovic said commenting the opening of a McDonald's fast food restaurant in Zagreb.

Montenegro: The Albanian Problem

The Albanian problem in Montenegro is specific, not because their minor numbers don't make them a destabilizing factor, but because political conditions in the republic are specific. The particularity of the region can be seen in the statistics which show that the number of Montenegrins and Albanians is dropping in Montenegro. Namely, the 1948 census showed that there were 342,009 Montenegrins or 90.67% of the population. The latest, 1991, census shows that the 380,484 Montenegrins account for just 61.84% of the population. A similar trend is true of the Albanians; 35,671 or 6.74% in 1971 and 40,880 or 6.64% in 1991. A rise in the number of Serbs has been recorded (6,707 or 1.78% in 1948 and 25,584 or 9.39% in 1991). There were no Yugoslavs in 1948 and the number grew to 25,584 or 4.2% in 1991. A rise in the overall number of Muslims was also recorded; 30,655 or 6.5% in 1961 and 89,932 or 14.62% in 1991. Historically, Albanians and Montenegrins have been good neighbors for centuries. Albanian tribes were good allies to the Montenegrins in their battles with the Turks, concluded Anton Berishai, a sociology professor at Pristina University in his interview to VREME.

Croatia: Personnel Mosaic

The fact the Croatian TV director Antun Vrdoljak did not spend New Year's Eve in Zagreb's Intercontinental Hotel with Tudjman as is customary, could be indicative but might not mean anything. Tudjman's entourage did not include Hrvoje Sarinic, Janko Bobetko, Franjo Greguric... Allegedly, the president's fierce verbal duel with the TV boss over his refusal to quit the post saw an epilogue 10 days later: Vrdoljak announced his departure himself, after weeks of rumors, saying he wasn't resigning but requesting not to extend his mandate. He said he would turn to making movies and combatting drug abuse, one of his obsessions as of recently.

Krajina: UNPOROFOR to Leave

Even people who don't like the idea of a peaceful, although yet to be re-integrated Krajina, are jumping on the peace train which Tudjman wants to run from Zagreb to Split via Knin. Branimir Glavas, the regional chief of Osijek and Baranja (who's being mentioned once again as someone Tudjman wants to get rid of) and a member of the rightist faction within the ruling HDZ, will have to tone down his speeches. Glavas repeated the conditions UNPROFOR has to meet to remain in Croatia. He feels those conditions have to include UNPROFOR's deployment along Croatia's internationally recognized borders, the opening of the Zagreb-Knin-Split and Zagreb-Belgrade railways and the return home of refugees. Is this offer of conditions actually Glavas' ticket for Tudjman's peace train, or was it made under orders from his boss to start softening the lower layers first.

Slovenia: Secretly about Serbia

Last week, the Slovenian parliament and government held a series of secret meetings which focused on Serbia. The meetings were so secret that the usually reliable state secretaries were banned from the meetings for two whole weeks. The government proposals on settling accounts with the former kindred nations were finally discussed by parliament under the veil of state secrets and police protection. The reasons for all this caution were naturally financial.

The specific danger that caused all the secrecy took the shape of the Serbian factor. Late in January last year, prime minister Janez Drnovsek got his first large bill from a consortium of foreign banks and was astonished to find the Associated Belgrade Bank among them with a claim for 80 million dollars. Much later Slovenian ministers found out that the overall amount of the former Yugoslavia's foreign debt controlled by Serbian banks was actually much larger.

Official figures issued by the Bank of Slovenia say that Serbian banks bought up around 500 million dollars of the debt over the past few years (at a third and even one tenth of the price) and secured another 600-700 million dollars through intermediary banks. Everything was bought up at a fraction of the cost from panic-striken creditors and it now represents a bargaining chip in the succession negotiations. Slovenian experts speculated that the Serbian side could now prevent the consortium from signing separate agreement with Slovenia and even tighten repayment conditions. In any case, Slovenian financial experts claim everything points to Slovenia being forced to pay off most of the Yugoslav debt.

Yugoslavia: Sports Diplomacy

Pre-war Yugoslavia had 111 representatives in international sports organizations. Now this number has been reduced to 20. Sanctions didn't affect only athletes and sports officials; some hard won positions have been lost in the past three years.

The forming of new states in the former Yugoslavia gave the sports world four new members. And while Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia became members of international sports organizations relatively easily, Yugoslavia's membership was either in jeopardy or frozen.

The lifting of sanctions in sports got Yugoslav athletes back into international competition in the first 100 days, but the new suspension is threatening to strangle Yugoslav team sports. It's hard to ensure a regular European or World competition if one of the participants is under threat of political elimination. In such a situation anyone who does not favor Yugoslavia can create obstacles. The best example are Yugoslav waterpolo clubs and national team who, although the best in the world, were cooly refused participation this year, although they weren't late for club competition or the European Championships.

Handball players met with similar pressure but managed to win the right to play in qualifications. "The pressure was strong especially from Scandinavian countries, but we got the national team into the qualifications," selector Lazar Grozdanovic said.