Word: slovenia
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...East-West conflict has rekindled those old animosities, tamped down for decades under communist rule. The re-emergence of Balkan rivalries unnerves many in Europe, but Yugoslavia's turmoil today is important -- and dangerous -- mostly to its own people and its nearest neighbors. When reports of fighting in Slovenia reached Washington, Secretary of State James Baker fell back on some of the old terminology. "It is truly a powder-keg situation," he said. Actually, while bloodshed in Yugoslavia is tragic and unnecessary, this time it does not threaten to ignite a world...
...school-yard brawl, the opening provocation was a taunt: "Independence!" But within 36 hours, the war of words between the republic of Slovenia and forces of the Yugoslav People's Army had escalated into a real fight, with the two sides trading lethal blows that left at least 40 dead and many more injured...
...While Slovenia had been voicing separatist ambitions for months, few could have predicted that the situation would career so quickly to the edge of civil war. Time and again during the past year, ethnic and political tensions in and among the six republics and two semiautonomous provinces have threatened to rip apart the Yugoslav nation. But Slovenia's quest to extricate itself from the quarrelsome federation had been relatively peaceful. The sudden eruption of armed hostilities between Slovenia and the central government in Belgrade raised fears that Yugoslavia's breakup might be at hand...
Last Monday both Slovenia and Croatia vowed to declare independence by midweek. Yugoslav federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic warned, "We would find ourselves sitting on a bomb, which could destroy us all." His words proved prophetic. On Tuesday each republic proclaimed its sovereignty. The next day tank columns moved toward border crossings, and the 20,000 federal troops in Slovenia were placed on combat alert. In the early-morning hours of Thursday, 40 tanks and 20 armored personnel carriers rolled toward the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana to secure the republic's main airport, and traded artillery and antitank fire with...
...that have stitched together an unwieldy federation of rivalrous ethnic groups since World War II have been unraveling for years. Since 1981, the 1.7 million Albanians in the Serbian-controlled province of Kosovo have been agitating for separate status. Last spring and summer the relatively prosperous northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia voted in free elections to install noncommunist, Western-oriented governments, while Serbia, the largest republic, chose to retain its communist government -- lately renamed socialist -- under hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic. Those divisive events were followed by a landslide referendum in which 88% of Slovenia's 2.1 million citizens...