Word: slovaks
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...hard it is to shut down such an important industry. As many as 80,000 jobs, the bulk of them in the restive and depressed region of Slovakia, depend on it. The federal government has pledged to cut output to 25% of 1988 levels by 1993, but already Slovak politicians have slowed down that timetable to stave off mass unemployment. Last month federal Prime Minister Marian Calfa took a scolding from his Israeli counterpart, Yitzhak Shamir, over a still pending agreement to sell 100 T-72 tanks to Syria in a deal worth $200 million. "Czechoslovakia is not interested...
...joined Israel in condemning the sale to Syria. The deal also set off a fierce struggle within Czechoslovakia between government officials who want to bolster the nation's international reputation and others who think the agreement could help bridge the gap until the industry retools for nonmilitary production. Says Slovak Prime Minister Jan Carnogursky: "We've asked the federal government to clear the matter up and persuade complaining governments that the deal is harmless...
Czechoslovakia's brief ethnic feud also illustrated the hair-trigger sensitivities that vex Eastern Europe. Slovaks, who account for a third of the nation's 15 million people, have long nursed a sense of victimization. Wary of Czech domination, Slovak leaders hinted at secession unless Prague agreed to extensive decentralization of core institutions, from the national bank to oil pipelines to management of minority affairs...
Fierce flashes of nationalism threaten to tear apart Yugoslavia, while nationalists in Slovakia, one of the two partly autonomous republics that make up Czechoslovakia, are pushing hard for a referendum that would allow Slovakia to break away. Yet while they demand independence for themselves, the 5 million Slovaks, a third of Czechoslovakia's population, deny any such choice to Slovakia's 600,000 ethnic Hungarians; the more militant nationalists even insist that the Hungarians should be made to speak Slovak. To combat such trends, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at last week's CSCE meeting called for a new "economic, environmental...
...March 23 decision to name the country the Czecho-Slovak Federative Republic was intended to appease angry Slovaks. Instead, it only increased nationalist ire. In the following weeks thousands marched in their provincial capital of Bratislava, calling for Slovak independence. The new designation is intended to provide equal ethnic billing...