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- <text id=91TT1599>
- <title>
- July 22, 1991: World Notes:Yugoslavia
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- July 22, 1991 The Colorado
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 44
- World Notes
- YUGOSLAVIA
- Breathing Space
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Despite daily charges of truce violations, the fragile
- cease-fire between the secessionist republic of Slovenia and the
- Yugoslav government held last week. Both are publicly committed
- to a three-month cooling-off period, yet the agreement has done
- little to quell tensions in independence-minded Croatia, where
- conflict between Croatians and Serbs threatens to erupt in
- warfare.
- </p>
- <p> Most ethnic Serbs, who number 600,000 among Croatia's 4.6
- million residents, are so integrated into the republic that they
- voted in favor of secession in the May 19 referendum. But a core
- of radicals, bent on preserving ties with Serbia, are waging a
- guerrilla war in Croatia's northeastern region of Slavonia and
- the southern pocket of Krajina, where the patchwork dispersal of
- both groups makes a peaceful solution difficult. The goal of the
- radicals is a Greater Serbia that would absorb Serbian enclaves;
- arrayed against them is Croatia's ambition to form a separate
- nation.
- </p>
- <p> As firefights between Croatian security forces and Serbian
- paramilitary units escalate, the incidents are getting
- increasingly ugly. Last week a policeman was killed in a
- shoot-out with a Serb barricaded in a house with his wife in the
- city of Osijek. The Serb was also killed, and his wife lost an
- arm while trying to pick up a police grenade and toss it back.
- </p>
- <p> The Yugoslav People's Army has mobilized a reported
- 200,000 reservists, most of them Serbs, and beefed up its
- strength at bases along Croatia's eastern border in an effort
- to preserve national unity. In response, the republic's
- nationalist leader, Franjo Tudj man, warned, "If our efforts for
- peace bear no fruit, the whole population will rise up."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-