RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE 15 June 1999
MORE RUSSIAN TROOPS HEADING FOR KOSOVA. General-Colonel
Georgii Shpak told Interfax in Moscow on 15 June that a
Russian convoy of eight trucks and three other vehicles left
Bosnia-Herzegovina bound for Kosova on 15 June. The convoy is
reportedly bringing supplies and money for the about 200
Russian soldiers who are already in Kosova. The previous day
Shpak denied unspecified press reports that the Russian army
sent additional troops into Kosova by plane, but he told
Interfax that the Defense Ministry has ordered about 2,500
paratroopers to prepare to participate in the international
peacekeeping force in Kosova (KFOR). Bulgaria, Hungary, and
Romania have denied Russian planes an air corridor en route
to Kosova until NATO and Russian officials agree on a command
structure for KFOR. (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 14 June 1999 and
related stories in Part II). FS
ORBAN WORRIES ABOUT VOJVODINA HUNGARIANS. Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orban on 14 June told the Western
European Union assembly in Paris that the 350,000 ethnic
Hungarians in Vojvodina might become Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic's next target. Orban said that the
most dangerous time for the Hungarian minority has ended
with the conclusion of NATO air strikes, but he added
that he fears Serbs fleeing Kosova would be settled in
Vojvodina. "This would further upset a demographic
balance already shaken up in recent years by the arrival
of quarter of a million Serbs from Bosnia," he
explained. MSZ
BUDAPEST EXPLOSIONS MIGHT HERALD NEW GANG WARS. The car
of a businessman involved in casinos and slot machines
exploded on 14 June in Budapest, slightly injuring one
person. The blast came just two days after an apparent
assassination attempt and two other explosions. Police
spokesman Laszlo Garamvolgyi said that the car explosion
does not appear to be related to the weekend incidents.
The daily "Vilaggazdasag" reports, however, that police
fear the bombings are the first step in a renewed
underworld war. MSZ
IS ROMANIA THE FUTURE OF SLOVAKIA?
By Michael Shafir
An interesting analysis of the Slovak parliamentary
and presidential elections has been recently provided by
two members of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Jan
Buncak and Valentina Harmadyova. The two Slovak
sociologists, unlike other analysts of the Slovak scene,
do not believe that the victory of the four-party
coalition in the ballot conducted for the legislature
last autumn, or Rudolf Schuster's May victory over
former Premier Vladimir Meciar in the presidential
elections are an indication of the Slovak electorate's
move to the right of the political spectrum.
Buncak and Harmadyova point out that there are
right and left forces both in the new coalition and in
the opposition, as they emerged after the parliamentary
ballot. The real confrontation, the two sociologists
show, is between approaches to reform. One orientation
is to the West, the other towards an "own Slovak path,"
the latter being embodied by Meciar and his Movement for
a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), but also including such
rightist parties as the Slovak National Party.
Schuster's own political views, they point out, would
place him more on the left side of the political
spectrum, yet that part of the Slovak left has
apparently concluded that only emulation of the West in
introducing reform can take Slovakia out of the economic
dead end which it had reached under Meciar's rule.
Precisely the opposite is true for the other side of the
spectrum. The opposition, Buncak says, though divided
between left-center and right oriented streams, is
nonetheless "united by the unwillingness to accept
standard methods and by the effort to seek an original
Slovak solution."
Harmadyova points out that psychological, rather
than political factors, play an important role in this
cleavage. The "Slovak-oriented" side, she says, is also
connected with "the traditional Slovak countryside
community." It is made up of "people who accept changes
only with difficulties." Both sociologists conclude that
the division reflected in the last elections is more one
between town and countryside orientations.
Three caveats arise here, however. First, there is
nothing either new, nor indeed originally Slovak about
this division. "Urbanists" and "populists" have been
known to confront one another under different names
through the eastern part of the European continent for
longer than a century. Second, Buncak and Harmadyova
overlook what political scientists call the
"performance" criterion. After all, Meciar and his HZDS
lost the elections not because the structure of the
population underwent a radical change in the last four
years, but simply because the "Slovakia's way" recipe
had produced nothing but an economic dead end combined
with increasingly apparent evidence of corruption among
Meciar cronies. Finally, they also fail to consider the
ethnicity factor. It is not an exaggeration to state
that it was the Hungarian vote that decided the outcome
of both elections and that this vote cut across the
classical town-village division.
These caveats, in turn, are food for thought for
further speculation. If the town-countryside division
could be overcome due to the "performance criterion,"
this means the outcome of the elections is also easily
reversible. In other words, unless the four-party
coalition implements its intentions and proceeds to
austerity measures and radical reforms, then in four
years the electorate will remember the former and fail
to benefit from the latter. "Declarations of intent" are
simply destined to be short-lived, as the Romanian case
amply demonstrates. In that country, the Democratic
Convention of Romania (CDR) in 1996 had displaced the
Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR), whose
social base, like that of the HZDS, is in the
countryside and in smaller urban settlements, precisely
because of the "performance record" of the PDSR. Now,
most polls indicate that the PDSR and its leader, former
President Ion Iliescu, are likely to win the next
elections. Instead of having implemented its program,
the CDR, fearing social unrest at the earliest stage of
its rule, has plunged the country into the "NATO
membership" substitute. Having failed to achieve the
latter, it is now left without credibility (and probably
running out of time) for its capacity to lead the way to
the former.
Slovakia may be more fortunate, for the government
of Premier Mikulas Dzurinda has made admission to the EU
"fast track" group, rather than NATO membership, its
main target, and that, in itself, calls for "performance
evidence." But as viewed by the EU, such evidence must
come not only in economic, but also in political form.
And above all, the Slovaks are expected by the EU to
pass a minority-language bill. As in Romania, where the
Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania has been a
member of the coalition but encountered difficulties in
achieving concrete results in the legislation it wants
to promote for the benefit of this minority, in Slovakia
the Hungarian Slovak Coalition, having once joined the
government, is facing opposition in the same quest. It
might not be a bad idea for Bratislava to take a better
look at Bucharest. It will find a lot of similarities,
starting from the inapplicability of the classic left-
right spectrum to believers in "Romania's way," a
category uniting leftists and rightists alike. This
glance may help the Slovaks avoid repeating the mistakes
of their Romanian peers.
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RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE 16 June 1999
SERGEEV PLEDGES 'CONSTRUCTIVE' TALKS. Russian Defense
Minister Igor Sergeev told AFP in Helsinki on 16 June that
"President [Boris] Yeltsin [asked him] to do everything, on
the basis of the UN resolution, in order to resolve all
litigious questions," over Russia's role in KFOR during his
meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Sergeev
added: "I think the negotiations will be constructive...The
West should not worry about our paratroopers in Prishtina."
Unnamed Defense Ministry officials told Reuters that Sergeev
will urge NATO to give Russian planes access to Hungarian and
Bulgarian air space to fly troop reinforcements to Kosova.
Russia, however, continues to deny NATO troops access to
Prishtina's airport (see related item in Part II). FS
SCHUSTER SWORN IN AS SLOVAK PRESIDENT. Rudolf Schuster,
Slovakia's first president elected by popular vote, was
sworn in on 15 June at a ceremony attended by the
presidents of neighboring Austria, Czech Republic,
Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine, an RFE/RL correspondent in
Bratislava reported. Schuster called on the guests to
help Slovakia in its efforts to be included in the "fast
track" group of countries joining the EU, and said that
in view of Bratislava's interest in joining both the EU
and NATO, it would be "unrealistic" to expect Slovak
neutrality. He vowed to be a president of "all Slovaks"
regardless of political or ethnic affiliation and said
he would listen to "comments" from the opposition if
their goal was the "prosperity and well-being of
Slovakia." Czech President Vaclav Havel met with
Schuster briefly before the inauguration and accepted
his invitation to pay an official visit to Bratislava,
CTK reported. MS
SLOVAK MINISTER SAYS EUROPEAN ORGANIZATIONS BACK
MINORITY-LANGUAGE BILL. Culture Minister Milan Knazko on
15 June said the OSCE, the European Commission, and the
Council of Europe accept the minority-language bill
recently approved by the ruling four-party Coalition
Council. The bill is not backed by the Hungarian
Coalition Party (SMK), which submitted its own version
to the parliament. Knazko criticized the SMK for not
discussing the bill with the coalition partners and for
threatening to vote against it. He said the move had
"met abroad with embarrassment, rather than
understanding." The coalition-approved bill enables
citizens in localities with a minority population of 20
percent or more to use their mother tongue in official
contacts with the authorities, but the SMK wants its
provisions to be extended to cover education and
culture, CTK reported. MS
HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT APPROVES KFOR CONTINGENT. The
parliament on 15 June approved a resolution on sending a
350-member guard battalion to join the peacekeeping
forces in Kosova, Hungarian media reported. It also
approved the passage of foreign peacekeeping troops
through Hungary or their stationing in the country in
support of humanitarian aid missions. Government
officials said the Hungarian battalion will guard the
KFOR headquarters in Prishtina. MSZ
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