Word: serbians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...century ago, Otto von Bismarck gazed on another Balkan crisis -- the collapse of the empire of Ottoman Turkey -- and shrank from getting militarily involved. In the Iron Chancellor's view, Germany had no interests there that "would be worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian musketeer." Though Serbian nationalism went on to ignite the First World War, the E.C. last week seemed to feel much as Bismarck had. At an emergency session in the Hague, the Community's foreign ministers rejected the idea of committing a "buffer" military force. The rejection prompted three other countries -- Canada, Austria and Australia...
...peninsula. If powerful Serbia were allowed to walk over Croatia, however, it might encourage aggression elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Yugoslav army insisted that it wanted only to relieve its posts under siege in Croatia, but the firepower it deployed -- and its marches into Bosnia -- looked more like Serbian expansion. While Bosnia was frantically mustering a defense force of its own, two frontline Croatian towns, Vukovar and Vinkovci, came under heavy fire as tanks advanced on Zagreb...
...Just as Serbian jealousy of the rich Slovenians perked up once both groups did not have the West as a common enemy, many Americans started questioning the domestic economic policies that held the Cold War coalition together...
...State of Croatia slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs during World War II, and insists that Serbs are facing a similar threat today. Those memories are particularly painful in the Serb-dominated regions of Croatia where today's fighting goes on. But sometimes they are harnessed to chimeras. Says Serbian Vice President Budimir Kosutic, appointed by Milosevic just last month: "The Croatians and the Germans behind them want to make a new state in the old borders of Austria-Hungary...
...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...