Little enthusiasm for the birth of nation

OFFICIALS yesterday faced the difficult work of institution-building after reshaping the troubled nation of Yugoslavia into a new country with a new name. Residents greeted the change with little enthusiasm.

Serbia and Montenegro, as the country now is called, is all that is left after a decade of war that broke Yugoslavia into pieces.

An EU-brokered accord approved by parliament on Tuesday leaves the two republics only loosely united, and they could break up for good as early as 2006.

“Does this mean we’ll have to stand in lines for new passports again?” Jelena Misic, a 32-year-old ethnologist from Belgrade asked.

The scepticism about the reform is typical for many Serbs and Montenegrins who lived through a decade of bloodshed during the disintegration of the old, six-republic Yugoslav federation created after World War II.

The new country is a loose union of its two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, linked only by a small joint administration in charge of defence and foreign affairs.

The constitution allows the member republics to hold independence referenda in three years.

The reform was seen as an attempt to accommodate conflicting views within both republics, ranging from demands for complete separation to a more tightly unified country.

It failed to satisfy either side completely.

Over the next 30 days, the republics are to create a new joint administration, which will include a 126-seat parliament and a president who will also head a government to be called the Council of Ministers.