Word: slovakia
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Though he said he agreed to the split "with a heavy heart," it was Klaus who pushed for resolution of the talks in the interest of limiting economic damage caused by continued uncertainty. Meciar insisted that Slovakia, the eastern third of Czechoslovakia, could be an "international subject" on its own while remaining part of a loose confederation with the Czech republic. To Klaus that sounded like neither fish nor fowl. With the strong federation he sought out of reach, he pushed for a clean split -- even as Meciar suggested that the pact "still does not mean...
...velvet revolution" wasn't the "Velcro revolution" instead. Parliamentary elections have revealed deepening differences between Czechs and Slovaks, thus increasing the chances that the 74-year-old federation will become unstitched like the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Last week, after the autonomy-seeking Movement for a Democratic Slovakia topped the polling in the Slovak republic, the group's leader, Vladimir Meciar, pressed his demand for a total rearrangement of Czech-Slovak relations...
Klaus' Civic Democratic Party is favored to win parliamentary elections this June, enabling him to continue the free-market drive. But the pain of transition has been felt most deeply in Slovakia, which is highly dependent on state-owned heavy industry. That has intensified Slovak demands for more autonomy or even independence. The government might be able to continue shock treatment only at the price of splitting the country...
...early days of the cold war, central Slovakia became the heartland of the heavy-arms industry. The sleepy little town of Martin, 145 miles north of Bratislava, was the site of a tank factory that employed 11,000; nearby Dubnica churned out armored personnel carriers; down the road, Povazska Bystrica produced jet engines...
...biggest loss for Slovakia's arms plants has been in exports to Warsaw Pact countries. Sales to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia's biggest customer, plummeted by 40% last year, and are falling off even more steeply this year...