SLOVENIA MARKS 10 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE
Slovenian President Milan Kucan remembers vividly the moment 10 years ago when his country took the dramatic decision to defy the military might of Belgrade. It was in the early hours of June 27, 1991.
Interview for Reuters by Marja Novak

Ljubljana, 22 June 2001


Slovenian President Milan Kucan remembers vividly the moment 10 years ago when his country took the dramatic decision to defy the military might of Belgrade.

It was in the early hours of June 27, 1991.

The parliament of Slovenia, then still part of an intact Yugoslavia, had voted two days before to declare independence after years of frustration with the militant Serbian nationalism of Slobodan Milosevic.

The Yugoslav army responded within hours after independence was declared by ordering tanks onto the streets of Ljubljana and other towns.
Kucan, a reformed communist, had been elected president in Slovenia's first multi-party elections in 1990.

"The most difficult moment for me was the morning when Yugoslav army tanks appeared on Slovenian streets and we had to decide whether to respond by armed defence," he told Reuters in an interview.

"As soon as we decided for arms it was clear that there would be victims," recalled 60-year-old Kucan.

"But I was encouraged by the fact that the Yugoslav army was not fighting for something right, had no real motive for hostility and that there was no ethnic conflict in Slovenia."

Slovenia mobilised its local territorial defence force and police to challenge the Yugoslav troops. A mercifully brief 10-day war ensued in which 64 people were killed.

Yugoslavia withdrew its army and the prosperous Alpine republic of two million people moved quickly to full national sovereignty for the first time since the eighth century.

Because its population is ethnically homogenous, Slovenia was spared the years of bloody conflict that engulfed Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo when they broke with Belgrade and which now threatens Macedonia.


REMARKABLE TRANSFORMATION

As it celebrates 10 years of independence, Slovenia can look back on a remarkable transformation.

Praised by two U.S. administrations as the success story of the Balkans, it has a record of political stability and economic growth which is the envy of its less fortunate neighbours.

It expects to join the European Union by 2004 and NATO shortly afterwards.
Economically, it has made great strides and is the wealthiest of all of Europe's former communist countries.

But its transition to a full market economy is far from complete.

The country has privatised some 1,400 companies but the largest privatisations -- in banking, insurance, energy and telecommunications -- needed to prepare for tougher competition inside the EU have still to be completed.

Inflation, brought under control in the late 1990s, has surged recently to nearly 10 percent.


SUMMIT FOCUSSED WORLD ATTENTION

Just days before celebrating its 10th birthday, Slovenia was the focus of world attention when it hosted the first summit meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Celebrations next Monday will be attended by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose country was one of the first to recognise Slovenia as an independent nation in 1991.

Kucan says he feared Yugoslavia might fall apart as long ago as 1983, when the federation failed to reach agreement on reforms to its rigid socialist economic system.

Slovenia and Croatia favoured a looser confederation of Yugoslavia's six republics under which they would have remained together while enjoying much greater autonomy.

But this was rejected by their partners.

Kucan gradually became convinced that the federation could not be reformed from within.

"With every day, with every conflict inside Yugoslavia, I became more and more aware that dialogue was no longer possible," Kucan recalls.

After the break with Belgrade, it took time for Slovenia to achieve full international recognition.

"The most important moment was our admission to the United Nations (in May 1992) and the unfolding of the Slovenian flag in front of the United Nations building," he says.

Like many Slovenians, Kucan remains sensitive to suggestions that the country may, however inadvertently, have started a decade of carnage in former Yugoslavia with its decision to break free.

He often cites former U.S. president Bill Clinton's comments during a visit to Slovenia in 1999 that the country "did the right thing" in becoming independent.
"Yugoslavia was an historical anachronism at that time," Kucan said. "It was unable to establish a platform of democracy, human rights and market economy...that would open its way to European integration.

"With Slovenia's independence we saved the world from yet another conflict and secured peace and security for us and others on this small part of Europe."