Vojvodina


The current situation in the other Serbian province, Vojvodina, is analyzed by Milena Putnik for the "AIM" news pool on July 22, 1998.

In a deep shadow of the conflict in Kosovo, a disquiet is creeping around Vojvodina that, once more, it could be sacrificed to Kosovo stereotypes.

It is the stereotype that the demand for autonomy is caused by national composition of the population, on which the regime insists, but the Belgrade opposition is not inclined to interpret the situation differently. On some occasions, they are seconded in Vojvodina itself by parties of Vojvodina Hungarians, mainly through a demand for personal autonomy, and sometimes by negotiations with the regime concerning separate rights. This all causes unease, since if Joszef Ksa (from SVM) demands that solders, Hungarians are removed from barracks in Kosvo - and then has negotiations about this with the heads of the Serbian Socialist party(!) - this is production of inequality on national base in a region which is specific for achieved joint life of a number of nations, confessions and cultures.

A reminder that the autonomy of Vojvodina could be sacrificed cme at the beginning of July, when the Contact group in Bonn decided that the proposal for the solution of Kosovo conflict is of confidential nature, which was seen as a possibility that Kosovo could gain a status of a third federal unit within Yugoslavia.

When Nenad Canak and Aleksandar Ivkovc, the representatives of the most influential opposition party in Vojvodina ,LSV, went to meet the OESCE delegation dressed all in black, with black berrets and party badges on them, it was a consciously provocative gesture. With it, they stated the same thing they wrote in a letter to the Contact group - that the sense that the world is ready to react only when somebody shows force and that all those that opted for a parliamentary struggle and principles have lost. The essence of both gestures was distilled in the question: what about Vojvodina ?

Nenad Canak is of the opinion that Vojvodina will have an ill fate when some definitive settling of accounts wit the regime of Slobodan Milosevic comes about, where it is more and more probable that "the regime sold Kosovo in some manner," since there is no other way to interpret the coolness with which a regime treats a war on its territory." Canak supports this argument with the possibility that Kosovo will be placed under some form of international protectorate, and that it is probable that something similar will be done with Sandzak:"It is quite probable that then, Vojvodina will be given to Belgrade as some consolation prize. He is only interested in Vojvodina anyway, since the money is there, and the only feeling the Belgrade regime has is the worm love for money."


Source: "AIM" news pool, July 22, 1998