From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: News, 4 Jan 93 (from Haluk)
Date: 5 Jan 1993 23:43:55 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

 : Greece asks U.N. to avoid military intervention in Bosnia
 : Self-declared Serbian state in Croatia to hold elections
 : Central Asian leaders pledge aid to war-torn Tadzhikistan

 Subject: Greece asks U.N. to avoid military intervention in Bosnia

        ATHENS, Greece (UPI) -- Greece asked the five permanent members of the
 U.N. Security Council Monday to avoid military intervention in Bosnia-
 Herzegovina, and to support the Greek position on Macedonia.
        The request came in a meeting between Greek Foreign Minister Michal
 Papaconstantiou and the ambassadors of the United States, Britain,
 France, Russia and China, the five permanent member-states of the
 Security Council.
        Papaconstantinou invited the five ambassadors to the Foreign Ministry
 and expressed Greece's concern about the possibility that the war in the
 Balkans would escalate, officials said.
        He requested the Security Council permanent members to avoid military
 intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
        The Greek move came as the Security Council prepared to consider a
 resolution authorizing the use of force against the Serbian military if
 the Serbs continued violating a no-fly zone in Bosnia.
        Over the past few days, the United States, France and Britain have
 moved closer in their views on the extent to which Western forces should
 intervene in Bosnia, but Greece expressed fears that intervention would
 increase the possibility of a wider Balkan war.
        Papaconstantinou also asked the Security Council's five permanent
 members to support the Greek position on recognition of the former
 Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.
        Last month, the European Community heads of government, meeting in
 Edinburgh, Scotland, agreed to continue backing Greece and to withhold
 recognition so long as the republic continued using the name
 ``Macedonia,''
        The former Yugosalv state then moved to seek U.N. Security Council
 recognition under the name Republic of Macedonia (Skopje).
        Athens countered last week by launching a diplomatic campaign to win
 support for its position among Security Council member states.
        Greece has a province named Macedonia bordering on the former
 Yugoslav state, and Athens believes Skopje's use of the name points to
 expansion ambitions. Greece's fears extend back to the era of Tito and
 Stalin, who supported hard-liners in Skopje.
 =========================================================================
 Subject: Self-declared Serbian state in Croatia to hold elections

        BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Elections will be held on March 28 for
 the self-styled parliament of the ``state'' declared on the 35 percent
 of Croatia overrun in 1991 by Yugoslav army-backed minority Serbian
 rebels, it was announced Monday.
        Tanjug, the official Yugoslav news agency, said polls would also be
 organized for the municipal councils of the so-called ``Republic of
 Serbian Krajina.''
        The announcement was made in the Krajina headquarters town of Knin,
 in western Croatia, by Mile Paspaj, the head of the self-styled
 legislature of the unrecognized ``state.''
        He said that 90 members will be chosen for the ``legislature.''
        There was no immediate reaction from the right-wing regime of
 President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia or U.N. officials overseeing the
 implementation of a peace plan that put an end to the fighting in the
 seven-month Serb-Croat conflict.
        The war was triggered when Croatia declared independence from former
 Yugoslavia in June 1991 because of fears of domination by communist-
 ruled Serbia, the largest republic of the erstwhile Balkan federation.
        Minority Christian Orthodox Serbs, who comprise 12 percent of the
 overwhelmingly Roman Catholic population of 4.7 million, refused to be
 included in an independent Croatia and launched an insurrection against
 the Tudjman regime with the assistance of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav
 army and Serbia.
        Serbian forces overran 35 percent of Croatia, which they seek to
 merge with the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro in a
 ``Greater Serbia.''
        Tudjman, however, has warned that the Croatian army will retake the
 Serb-held territory by force if U.N.-European Community negotiations
 fail to produce an accord on its return to Croatia.
        U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance, who engineered the peace plan, has
 also ruled out the secession of the Serb-held areas.
        Fighting was halted by a Vance-brokered Jan. 3, 1992, cease-fire and
 some 14,000 U.N. peace-keeping troops were deployed to enforce the truce
 pending a political resolution of the dispute.
 =========================================================================
 Subject: Central Asian leaders pledge aid to war-torn Tadzhikistan

        MOSCOW (UPI) -- Leaders of the five Central Asian former Soviet
 republics met Monday in the Uzbekistan capital Tashkent and agreed to
 step up cooperation on regional security and give humanitarian aid to
 strife-torn Tadzhikistan.
        This is the second regional summit of the five Central Asian
 presidents since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The last one was held
 in early 1992 in the Kazakhstan capital Alma Ata.
        In a joint communique issued in Tashkent, the leaders expressed their
 ``moral support for the constitutional authorities in Tadzhikistan'' and
 said they would provide ``humanitarian aid in the form of food, medicine
 and clothes'' to the stricken republic.
        Tadzhikistan has been wrenched apart by nine months of bitter
 fighting between Islamic rebels and pro-Communist forces in a civil war
 compounded by ethnic hostilities and clan rivalries, uprooting many
 thousands of people. The government has changed hands three times during
 the conflict.
        Tadzhik officials last week said there were 537,000 officially
 registered refugees in the country, just over 10 percent of the
 population of 5.5 million, according to the Russian state news agency
 Itar-tass.
        The backward, mountainous republic's economy has been paralyzed by
 the war, with officials assessing economic damage at $216 million, and
 70,000 people have fled the country, many across the Afghanistan border.
        Attempts by Tadzhikistan's neighbors to send peacekeeping troops to
 the region have so far come to nothing, with Central Asian states making
 do with declarations of solidarity and some humanitarian aid.
        Next-door Uzbekistan, with its large Tadzhik minority, is
 particularly alarmed by developments in Tadzhikistan, fearing ethnic and
 religious bloodshed could spill over onto its soil.
        The only non-Tadzhik armed force stationed in the republic is a
 Russian motorized infantry division, which has been used by government
 forces to restore order in the Tadzhik capital Dushanbe.
        Russian troops on the Tadzhik-Afghanistan border have come under
 increasing pressure in recent weeks as Tadzhik refugees storm border
 posts to flee fighting between pro-government troops and retreating
 Islamic rebels.
        Participating in the one-day Tashkent summit were presidents
 Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Askar
 Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, Saparmurad Niyazov of Turkmenistan and the
 Chairman of the Tadzhik Parliament and Tadzhik leader Emomali Rakhmonov.
        The Central Asian heads of state discussed ways of coordinating
 economic and finance policy as a means of minimizing the effects of
 inflation and an alarming fall in industrial production. They also
 talked about strengthening regional security.
        The presidents agreed to hold such meetings on a regular basis and
 scheduled the next one for the Turkmenistan capital Ashgabad in April.
        The five leaders were due to meet during a Commonwealth of
 Independent States summit in the Belarus capital Minsk on Christmas Day,
 but the meeting was put off till Jan. 22, the latest in a series of C.I.
 S. summit postponements.
        Kazakh President Nazarbayev is impatient with the slow pace of
 integration within the Commonwealth and has said the presidents should
 either turn the C.I.S. into a fully-fledged confederation or admit it is
 a failure and go their separate ways.
        The Tashkent summit suggests the republics of Central Asian may turn
 their back on the post-Soviet Commonwealth and create their own mini-
 confederation, with regional security structures and closer economic
 integration.
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