Word: croatian
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...weeks, Slobodan Milosevic, president of Yugoslavia's largest republic, Serbia, had resisted the European Community's attempts to engineer a peaceful future for its neighboring republic, Croatia. Since Croatia declared independence from the Yugoslav federation on June 25, a brutal ethnic war has raged in its eastern region. Croatian security forces are pitted against rebel Serbian residents of the republic who want their homes and fields incorporated into an enlarged Serbia...
...been a rout: with money from Serbia and active support from parts of the Serb-dominated federal Yugoslav People's Army, the rebels have steadily gained control of the roughly one-quarter of Croatian territory where they have a strong ethnic presence. Under those conditions, why should Milosevic, whose power at home is girded by what most Serbs see as a righteous war for Serbian self-determination next door, accept a peace forged by foreigners...
...persuade him to do so, E.C. officials began brandishing threats of Serbia's total isolation, complete with economic sanctions. Last week Milosevic finally followed Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's lead and signed on to an E.C. plan to monitor a cease-fire and moderate an all-party peace conference for war-torn Yugoslavia. Cornered into a toast, Milosevic said, "You always have to protect victims, and Serbs are victims in this case." Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek, who brokered the agreement on behalf of the Community, added an amendment to Milosevic's grudging salute: "All those...
Within hours, the clinking glasses had made way for thudding mortars and stuttering machine guns. Every promised cease-fire in Yugoslavia unleashes new fury on the battlefields, and last week's was no exception. Serb rebels managed to block the main road connecting the Croatian capital of Zagreb to the besieged region of Slavonia along the Danube River to the east, virtually cutting the republic in two. The Yugoslav federal air force subjected Osijek, Slavonia's major city, to indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets. Said a senior British diplomat in London: "This is naked grabbing of all the ground Milosevic...
...persistence of such fears even in the highest echelons of the Serbian government hardly bodes well for peace talks. Croatian President Tudjman, as strident a nationalist as Milosevic, has done little to allay them. Had Tudjman made even perfunctory mention of his republic's 600,000 Serbs -- some 12% of the population -- in the Croatian constitution adopted last December, perhaps the conflict would not have grown as violent...