Issue 49 - August 31, 1992

Either a true autonomy, or ethnic cleansing of the "northern province" - these are key political options being maneuvered about for almost four years. Conflict could not be delayed when in the last year a wave of 140,000 refugees broke on Vojvodina

Of all that which Prime Minister Panic has promised, perhaps the most dangerous is the promise that war criminals and those responsible for ethnic cleansing will be arrested and punished

When two-thirds of all workers are on their forced vacations, when hospitals lack food and medicine, when fuel is short and gasoline coupons remain unused, when the GNP fell to less than 15 billion dollars from near under 30 billion dollars three years earlier, when the full economic blockade has been imposed, when prices soar daily, when all this is happening to us there is just a black market and "a parallel economy" that are helping us to survive

The Serbian authorities have finally agreed to negotiate with the opposition; not so much as to reduce the risk of violent political confrontation (since they seem to believe international isolation is grist to their mill) but because they want to gain legitimacy from abroad

We talked with Ivica Racan, once president of the Croatian Communist Party and now president of the Party for Democratic Change (SDP), about the future of socio-democracy in Croatia