From: malenovi@plains.NoDak.edu (Malenovic Nikola V.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Yugoslav Diplomacy ( VREME NDA 15 Sep 1992 )
Date: 15 Sep 92 22:04:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: plains.20380
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computing Network


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     "Vreme" News Digest Agency                  No. 51, September 14, 1992
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    Yugoslav Diplomacy
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                   REBELLIOUS DEPARTURE OF MINISTER OBEDIENT


           Serving  his  president  to  the  end,  foreign minister
           Jovanovic  resigned in  the attempt  to overthrow  prime
                   minister Panic, but the opposite happened

    Mr. Vladislav Jovanovic saved his best  move, from the viewpoint of real
    national interests, for  the end of his 56-week-long  term in office: he
    resigned as foreign minister because he disagreed with Mr. Milan Panic's
    policy, thus  considerably strengthening the  world's confidence in  the
    Yugoslav prime minister.  The world saw the deathly  serious face of the
    59-year-old  diplomat   only  as  another  of   Milosevic's  masks.  His
    resignation,  and especially  his reasons,  are proof  positive that Mr.
    Panic  is  eluding  the  Serbian  president's  control  and  that "their
    showdown begins now", as a prominent Belgrade professor commented on the
    news.

    "It is no longer possible for me to remain in a government that is, more
    and more openly,  pursuing a policy contrary to  the interests of Serbia
    and the Serbian people", wrote the third Serbian foreign minister in the
    Milosevic era and the first foreign  minister of the Federal Republic of
    Yugoslavia. Mr.  Jovanovic spiced his explanation,  openly calculated to
    oust  the  federal  prime  minister  by  accusing  him  of betraying the
    national cause, with pathetic rot on  how Mr. Panic's moves are "greatly
    at odds" with his "understanding  of national duty and dignity". Current
    president of the  Socialist Party of Serbia Borisav  Jovic said it best:
    "The minister of foreign affairs had  been our proposal", thus making it
    clear to  the readers of  the NIN weekly  which ministers in  Government
    were his party's candidates.

    When forming his  government in July, Mr. Panic  first offered this post
    to former Yugoslav ambassador in  Washington, Mr. Zivorad Kovacevic, who
    was  dismissed from  this office  by Mr.  Milosevic. Mr. Kovacevic would
    have accepted, but  the Serbian regime vetoed this.  This experience and
    the desire not to provoke  unduly the already frightened and exasperated
    Socialists have resulted in the  prime minister deciding on a transitory
    solution  for  the  foreign  ministry,   to  wit  the  current  Yugoslav
    Ambassador to China Ilija Djukic.

    Mr. Djukic is  a career diplomat on whose  highly professional qualities
    the  protagonists  of  the  foreign  political  scene  in  Belgrade  are
    undivided.  Those who  have known  him longer  say that  "he had nothing
    against"  Mr. Milosevic  when he  came  to  power and  that, as  regards
    attitude  to the  "national question",  he owes  something to his Kosovo
    origins. He  is ranked among  the reasonable, whose  views on the  world
    were shaped in the first post-war Yugoslav diplomatic school. (...)

                                                                Dusan Reljic


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     "Vreme" News Digest Agency                  No. 51, September 14, 1992
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Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:8635 soc.culture.europe:8248 soc.culture.turkish:9804