Word: yugoslavia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Federal President Borisav Jovic bowed to nationalist sentiment this month when he said the troubled country may soon hold a referendum to decide if Yugoslavia's six republics should split into separate nations. "The right of self-determination, including the right of secession," he said, "is a natural political right of each nationality...
...same time, the semi-autonomous province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9 to 1 but which is administered by Serbia, is engaged in a bitter dispute with Belgrade over a recent attempt to break away. Serbia, the largest republic, with 36% of Yugoslavia's 23.6 million people, has suspended the Kosovo parliament and rushed more troops into the province. The move came after more than 100 Kosovo deputies declared their region's independence from Serbia and demanded full republic status within the Yugoslav federation...
...tougher Milosevic gets with Kosovo, the more likely it is that Slovenia and Croatia will accelerate their moves away from the center. "Whatever happens now, Yugoslavia as we have known it since World War II is finished," says Zvonko Baletic of the Institute of Economics in Zagreb. "The best we can hope for is a confederation of basically independent states...
...Yugoslavia's poorer, heavily subsidized southern republics, Macedonia and Montenegro, are far less enthusiastic about a breakup. They may yet join Serbia in resisting such a move, or enlist in a new political grouping with Belgrade as its base. Further disintegration could also lead to aggressive new moves by Serbia, which has said repeatedly that in the event of the federation's breakup, it will redraw its borders. That would probably mean an attempt to annex Kosovo and a struggle with Croatia over the future of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 33% of the people are Serbs...
Some 40% of Yugoslavia's 8.1 million Serbs live in other republics, making prospects for negotiated independence remote -- and the threat of violent confrontations real if change is not handled carefully. "Any unilateral attempts to break up Yugoslavia will lead to civil war," says Dusan Bilandjic, a political scientist at the University of Croatia in Zagreb. "Once it starts, it will be difficult to stop...