SLOV Guide to main ethnic groups Serbians SLOV Slovenes HUNG Hungarians Muslims MONT Montenegrins Albanians acetones Turks Other ableto impose its domination on the others - particulary Croatia. You have to remember that in the original Yugoslav state after 1918 Slovenia was only added at the insistence of the Croats and the Slovenes; for the Serbs, Slovenia was an optional extra.
My guess is that the recent army attack on Slovenia was not motivated mainly by a drive to keep them in the federation, but to secure the borders temporarily in order that Croatia could not be supplied from the West. The key aim is to deal with and subordinate Croatia and with it the rest of Yugoslavia. When the war comes, as seems absolutely inevitable, it will take the form of an all-out attack on Croatia.
As far as the economic rationality of driving Diti Slovenia is concerned, well it is not economically rational - but then the Serbian leadership is not thinking in economically rational, but politically-rational forms. SO: How have politics developed in the past period in Croatia and Slovenia?
ML: Slovenia and Croatia differ greatly. Unlike Croatia, Slovenia is ethnically homogeneous. Moreover, the 1972 party urge did not affect BROU Slovenia as much as it did Croatia. Finally, Slovenia started to liberalise much earlier, in the mid-1980s, when the reforming wing of the local Communist party gained the upper hand over the conservatives. This led to the establishment of liberal regime, freedom of expression and as- with the de facto sembly.
Sarajevo MONTENEGRO..: Titograd O Adriatic Sea of national and democratic rights. Though in the elec tions of April 1990 the Communists were defeated, by a right-ofcentre nationalist coalition DEMOS, they remained the largest party. Indeed Milan Kucan, their leader, was elected president of the republic. Despite the frequent complaints that the DEMOS government is authoritarian, Slovene political life is mor open and democratic that Croatian. This is due, among other things, also to the fact that Slovenia adopted a proportional electoral system, giving a wide span of political groups and parties in the republican parliament.
Things happened differently in Croatia. There the decon top go for multi-party elections came at the last minute - barely four months before they actually took place. It involved an etrective coup reformed Com- rective coup within the TRICKS. The electoral system which they adopted, however, was the British variety, i.e. first past the post. Finally, the elec tions were held against the background of an already mas Milosevic meets Germany's Genscher sive campaign against Croatia by Serbia, part of which consisted in whipping up the Serb minority against the Croatian All these factors contributed to the electoral victory not of a coalition, as in Slovenia, but of a single nationalist party - the Croatian Democratic Union (CDU). The CDU won some 42 per cent of the vote, but gained nearly two-thirds of parliamentary seats.
In 'these elections, Croatia's Serb minority mostly voted for the Communists rather than for the nationalist Serb Democratic party. After the CDU victory, lowever, the majority of Serb voters became politically pasVojvodina includine voivocing and Kosove Belgrade VIA Kosovo ALBANIA • skopie MACEDONIA Driving force of the crisis Slobodan Milosevic what position for The political situation in Yugoslavia today is immensely