-Caveat Lector-
>From Independent (UK)
US Post misplaces the Grand Canyon
By David Usborne in New York
AMERICA IS not a nation of geographers. After the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit
by missiles because intelligence staff used out-of-date maps, we now learn that the US
Postal Service cannot locate the Grand Canyon.
A new series of 60-cent stamps - 100 million of them - have just left the presses.
They show the world's largest and most famous hole in the ground alongside three
words, printed in the lower right hand corner, "Grand Can
yon, Colorado".
As almost any American schoolchild will tell you, the Canyon, though
carved by the Colorado river, is in Arizona.
In Colorado, at least, they are amused. The Governor of the state,
Bill Owens, remarked through a spokesman: "Colorado already has so
many national treasures that we would not want to steal the only one
Arizona has to offer."
The cost of printing the stamps, now likely to be ditched, is put at
$500,000 (£310,000).
>From Inst for War & Peace Reporting
www.iwpr.net/
Remnants Of An Opposition
During the winter of 1996-97 Serbia's opposition appeared on the verge of ousting
Slobodan Milosevic. Those days are long gone.
By a journalist in Belgrade
(Published on May 18, 1999)
Despite international hopes that an internal opposition would emerge in Serbia to
topple the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the handful of opposition
figures are more marginalised than ever.
Two and a half years the three most prominent opposition leaders--
Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party, Vuk Draskovic of the Serb
Movement for Renewal (SPO) and Vesna Pesic of the Civic Alliance of
Serbia (GSS)--marched together as members of the Zajedno (together)
coalition in daily street protests against the Milosevic regime. Now
their support appears to have all but disappeared.
The biggest loser is Zoran Djindjic, the former mayor of Belgrade.
Before the beginning of the NATO bombing campaign, he predicted that
the regime would use it as a pretext to turn on the internal
opposition. Yet he has failed to find a way to turn what was a
correct prognosis into political capital.
In practice, the popularity and influence of Djindjic's Democratic
Party, which advocates a programme of integration with Western
Europe, has been on the wane since Djindjic decided it should boycott
Serbia's last parliamentary elections.
In the absence of parliamentary representation, the party has been
ignored by the media. Its residual influence is limited to the
handful of municipalities which it continues to control, despite the
disintegration of the Zajedno coalition and Djindjic's falling out
with Draskovic.
While the NATO air strikes have made conditions worse for all
political opposition, Djindjic has also not done himself any favours.
He failed to condemn the NATO "aggression" immediately, a sine qua
non for a Serbian politician during the war, and he made a couple of
careless remarks to Western reporters, saying that he is ready to
become Yugoslav president after the war--a statement the regime media
has used to demonise him.
Rumours that Djindjic has fled the country abound. Worse still, state
television has targeted both him and Vuk Obradovic, the former
general who heads the Social-Democratic Party, labelling them
traitors.
Djindjic's public endorsement of a European solution for Serbia and
the Balkans does not win him any popularity in the current climate.
However, political analysts note, Djindjic may be successfully
positioning himself as the man to deal with the West, depending on
the outcome of the war. Already fluent in German, it is said that he
is intensively studying English.
In spite of a brief and unsuccessful period in government, Draskovic
and his SPO remain the most powerful opposition force in Serbia.
Many potential opposition voters are critical of Draskovic for his
role in the disintegration of the Zajedno coalition and the way in
which he sold out to Milosevic by joining the government. But
Draskovic can always count on support a hard core of loyalists
attracted by his personal charisma.
Many of his critics viewed his January elevation to the post of
deputy prime minister as a betrayal of all opposition ideals. But
even for them, Draskovic's recent performance, being bounced out of
the government for publicly urging political compromise with the
West, has helped him redeem himself. Nevertheless, most analysts view
him as too unreliable an ally and too immature a politician to lead
Serbs to the democratic future his rhetoric promises.
The third and smallest party in the Zajedno coalition, the GSS,
should emerge from the current conflict with its patriotic
credentials enhanced, even though the party opposed the earlier wars
in both Croatia and Bosnia and thus got used to accusations of
betraying the national interest long ago.
The change in public perception of the GSS does not reflect any about-
face in party policy, but the fact that party president Goran
Svilanovic is currently in uniform, having been mobilised in the wake
of the bombing campaign. This is in marked contrast to the three
political parties in government--Milosevic's Socialists, his wife
Mira Markovic's United Yugoslav Left and Vojislav Seselj's Radicals--
who have largely managed to keep their members out of the army.
Svilanovic succeeded Vesna Pesic as head of the GSS just days before
the air strikes were launched when Pesic moved to the United States.
As yet, however, he remains largely unknown and the party has never
commanded much support from the electorate.
The profile of Vuk Obradovic, leader of the Social-Democratic Party,
has grown in the course of the war as a result of the attacks on him
in the regime media for comments he allegedly made to foreign
journalists. Although his party is the youngest of Serbia's
opposition parties and has only fought one election, it is now well-
known across the country, albeit for the wrong reasons.
By contrast, Nebojsa Covic, leader of the Democratic Alternative and
a former mayor of Belgrade, appears to have disappeared from public
life since the beginning of the NATO bombing campaign, a fact which
may count against him after the war.
Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) is the only
opposition party which, for some reason, has access to state media,
including Radio-Television Serbia, but is yet to express any opinion
about Serbia's post-war political configuration.
In its public statements, the DSS has focused instead on insisting
that the mandate of the future international mission in Kosovo should
be precisely defined, so as to avoid a situation akin to that "in
Republika Srpska, where the jurisdictions of the mission would be
above the civilian authorities."
Parties representing the interests of Serbia's ethnic minorities--the
Alliance of Hungarians in Vojvodina (SVM) and the Democratic Alliance
of Vojvodina Hungarians, and the ethnic Muslim Sandzak Coalition--
have decided to keep a low profile for the duration of the war.
As SVM leader and mayor of Subotica Jozef Kasa says: "When the bombs
are falling, it is not appropriate to talk about self-rule."
The author is an independent journalist in Belgrade.
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<Picture: Back to the home page>© Institute of War & Peace Reporting
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