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- <text id=91TT1125>
- <title>
- May 27, 1991: World Notes:Yugoslavia
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- May 27, 1991 Orlando
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 37
- World Notes
- YUGOSLAVIA
- Dangerous Muddle
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Virtually rudderless after months of ethnic violence and
- political strife, Yugoslavia was left without a helmsman last
- week. Croatia's Stipe Mesic, 57, was to assume the rotating
- leadership of the country's collective federal presidency, made
- up of representatives from each of the six republics and two
- provinces. But the routine vote turned into a crisis when
- Communist-ruled Serbia and three of its allies refused to
- approve Mesic, fearful that he might promote the country's
- disintegration. Said Borisav Jovic, the Serbian representative
- who led the presidency for the past year: "No country can vote
- for a man as President who aims to destroy the system he heads."
- </p>
- <p> The political vacuum can only deepen Yugoslavia's state of
- shock. Serbia, the largest republic in the troubled Balkan
- country of 23 million, is struggling to preserve its power over
- federal institutions, including the army. But the federation
- itself has been stumbling toward dissolution since free
- elections last year installed non-Communist governments in the
- republics of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
- Macedonia.
- </p>
- <p> So far this month, at least 20 people have died in the
- country's bloodiest conflicts between Serbs and Croats since
- World War II.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-