Issue 26 - March 26, 1992

"No citizen of Serbia can be deprived of his citizenship, expelled or extradited" (the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia)

The leading world team of experts on the Yugoslav crisis disbanded without a reliable recipe for bringing the hyper-nationalists to their senses

VREME asked Mrs. Judith Cumin, the representative of the UN High Commission for Refugees, for an interview. In brief, the situation is as follows

"No citizen of Serbia can be deprived of his citizenship, expelled or extradited" (the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia)

After the Serbian government announced last week the new price list of basic essentials - bread, flour, oil, sugar and milk, involving increases of between 45% and 85%, and following the issuance by the National Bank of Yugoslavia of credits worth around 25 billion dinars - the spring harvest in the "diminished" Yugoslavia should have begun. However, the old socialist agricultural model in which it was enough to "give" credit and prices to the farmers, is obviously no longer sufficient to protect the country from starvation.

There are no special problems surrounding the accreditation of Budimir Kosutic to Israel, said the Israeli Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem this week. Thus, Kosutic will most likely in a few weeks formally become the first ambassador of the incomplete Yugoslavia, elected by its incomplete presidency, as first reported by VREME.

Not even two normal salaries are enough to cover the basic costs of living

The very fact that the parties from Belgrade and Zagreb agreed to the immediate release of prisoners of war, to the return of refugees, to an estimation of human loss and damage, to the ensuring of political independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to deciding that borders cannot be forcibly redrawn, to the realization that political problems can only be solved by peaceful means - served to encourage the public at home

It would be very unfair to forecast how each will fare in the future, but it is clear that the ranking will be only in terms of bad-worse-worst

I was surprised at how interested people in Zagreb were to know what is going on in Belgrade. For a second I thought that the effort to separate Serbs and Croats had failed after all