Most analysts accept that the break up of Yugoslavia, which brought war to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and now Kosovo was not the result of submerged ethnic hatreds but of the very real efforts of the country s politicians. More than any other leader, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is being blamed for the tragic events that have swept the region.
Few leaders can boast such a contradiction.
He oversaw the break-up of Yugoslavia, failed to secure his vision for the Serbs of Bosnia or Croatia, the economy of the once prosperous country has all but bottomed out, and he s now brought war to Kosovo. His success is very much owed to being in the right place at the right time. As a high-level Communist bureaucrat in 1987 he travelled to a suburb of Pristina, Kosovo s capital, to meet with Communist party delegates. His meeting was interrupted by thousands of angry Serbs. By then, the minority Serbs were growing dissatisfied with the constitutional order in Kosovo as imposed by the country s Communist founder Josip Broz Tito.