document: Yesterday , with a tenuous peace settling over Slovenia , the exchange panicked . Slovenia bonds slumped . No one touched the stocks . The foreign exchange rights went begging . `` There is a certain logic to this , '' says Drasko Veselinovic , the exchange 's chief executive . `` Slovenes are now beginning to see the costs of independence more clearly than when we were at war . '' The two million people of this picturesque Alpine republic are waking up from their two-week nightmare sobered by the implications of their intoxicating declaration of secession from Yugoslavia on June 25 . Their bravado is undiminished , reflected in the almost unanimous feeling that there can be no going back now that blood has been spilled in defense of independence . But there is also a growing unease about going forward , because no one knows where Slovenia is headed . For the moment , the Slovenes are feeling lonely , unrecognized by the nations of the world . Their considerable trade with the rest of Yugoslavia , which helped make them the country 's richest people , is vanishing . Their identity is being turned upside down ; once known as Yugoslavia 's `` developed north , '' Slovenia will now be lumped together with Western Europe 's `` underdeveloped south . '' Nationalism overshadows pragmatism , a quality that once distinguished Slovenia from the rest of the often bewildering Balkans . `` We 've decided to be our own country , '' says Mr. Veselinovic , `` but we really do n't know how we will execute it . '' The Balkanization of this Balkan country has also become Europe 's worst nightmare . Almost every country on the continent has its own disenchanted minorities , from the Soviet Baltics to French Corsica , that could be encouraged by the independence declarations of Slovenia and the neighboring republic of Croatia . Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has held up recent events here -- the Yugoslav army assault on Slovenia and the bitter ethnic clashes between Croats and Serbs -- as a warning to his land of what can happen when nationalism fractures a country . While the European Community is counting on the peace plan it brokered to defuse tensions -LRB- it calls for a three-month period of negotiations in Yugoslavia -RRB- , most governments concede that the country 's breakup is inevitable . But the West Europeans also are wary of moving toward recognition of the various pieces . `` We have every sympathy for small peoples who aspire to affirm their national identity by democratic methods , '' the Swiss foreign minister reportedly told a European conference on national minorities . `` But that does n't mean we can accept the unilateral alteration of frontiers . '' This shunning by Western Europe , and the U.S. , is particularly disillusioning for a people who enjoy their BMWs , Peugeots and Fiats , their shopping trips to Munich and Venice and their vacation chalets in the Alps . The Slovenes , from their days in the Austro-Hungarian empire , have always considered themselves to be Westerners . Nestled between the Alps and the Adriatic , Slovenia became the most prosperous patch of communist Europe . The per capita annual income of nearly $ 7,000 is 10 times that of the southern regions of Yugoslavia . But as Slovenes measure themselves with Western Europe , it is they who are the poorer cousins . Joze Mencinger , an economist and former finance minister of Slovenia , illustrates the republic 's economic resilience by noting that while Yugoslavia 's industrial output fell 18 % so far this year , Slovenia 's declined only 10 % . When reminded by a visitor that Austria , in contrast , is posting robust growth , he grows somber . `` Okay , we must realize that we will be the less-developed part of Europe , '' he says . `` Unfortunately , in times of transition like this , people 's expectations are often wrong . Everybody expected that we could become Austria and Switzerland overnight . '' Over a decade might even be too soon . Slovenia 's exports of assembled cars , pharmaceuticals , refrigerators and furniture account for a third of the total value of the goods and services it produces . But Slovene economists reckon that exports would have to double to match the performance of other small European countries . Slovenia is counting on expanding its already extensive ties with Austria -LRB- a joint venture between Austrian and Slovene companies recently completed a high-tech Alpine tunnel opening another border crossing -RRB- as well as courting more business with its other old Austro-Hungarian partners , Czechoslovakia and Hungary . But what Slovenes dream of is one day being admitted to the EC . `` It 's not size that makes a country successful , '' says Josip Skoberne , head of the international division of the Slovene Chamber of Economy , citing EC-member Luxembourg , far smaller in population and area than Slovenia . `` It 's your ability to engage in international trade that makes you viable . '' Finding new markets in the West is all the more urgent with the certain decline in Slovenia 's trade with the rest of Yugoslavia . A quarter of all goods produced in Slovenia are purchased by other Yugoslavs , and Slovene leaders counted on maintaining these ties even after declaring independence . But the recent fighting , they believe , ended all hope of economic union . `` Unbelievable , '' scoffs Mr. Skoberne as he reads a letter telefaxed from the council of Banja Luka , a town with a large Serbian population in the province of Bosnia-Hercegovina , decreeing that all Slovene-owned assets in the city are to be inventoried and frozen . One of the major motivations behind Slovenia 's independence grab was to free itself from the `` Yugoslav risk '' that hampered most attempts to attract foreign investment . Now , Mr. Skoberne and others worry about an emerging `` Slovene risk . '' At the stock exchange , Mr. Veselinovic frets that his post-independence plans to trade in gold , commodities and foreign currencies are jeopardized by the uncertainty engulfing Slovenia . `` We had been getting a lot of interest from abroad , but they wo n't invest now while things are so unsettled , '' he says . `` But this is only logical . I would n't do it , either . ''
extractive_keyphrases: slovenia bonds yugoslavia independence declarations european community industrial output national identity slovene risk
abstractive_keyphrases: post-independence plans