Yugoslavs Press Economic Reform Amid Ethnic Strife

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  The muddle of Yugoslav politics continues to promise confusion and further strife in the coming days and weeks as the central government here moves toward enacting economic reforms in the midst of an ethnic power struggle between the Albanians and the Serbs in the province of Kosovo.

For most of the last week, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have taken to the streets to protest the Serb-inspired resignation of two of their Communist Party leaders. The unrest reportedly subsided Tuesday due, in part, to a blizzard.

The demonstrations have been a rare show of resistance by the Albanians in the face of a steady Serbian campaign to regain control of the region, which was once Serbia’s national heartland.

Major changes in the Yugoslav constitution, due to be passed later this week by the Yugoslav Federal Assembly, are designed to bring about significant reform of the banking system and to encourage increased foreign investment.

Those changes, however, hinge on corresponding alterations to the Serbian constitution, which, in turn, depend on the willingness of Kosovo Communist Party leaders to endorse constitutional amendments that would give the Serbs increased control over police and courts in the region.

The Serbs’ drive for increased control over the economically backward region of Kosovo has been going on for much of the last year, led by Slobodan Milosevic, the powerful Serbian Communist Party leader. Milosevic has appealed to Serbian animosity toward the ethnic Albanians, who now compose 90% of the population of a region that the Serbs have always considered their national cultural center.

The Serbs charge that the Albanians of Kosovo ultimately seek to withdraw from the Yugoslav federation and join with neighboring Albania.

The Albanians say the Serbs are nationalist hysterics who refuse to accept that the province of Kosovo is now 90% Albanian.

Kosovo--technically labeled one of two autonomous provinces within Serbia, which in turn is one of six Yugoslav republics--is the most economically depressed area in Yugoslavia, with an unemployment rate of 50% and a birthrate that is one of the highest in Europe.

Last week, under pressure from the Serbian Communist Party’s Central Committee, two Albanian party leaders resigned their posts, inspiring protests led by Albanian intellectuals and students who fear a renewal of Serbian domination in their political and economic affairs.

The Serbs, under the leadership of Milosevic, have won the federal government’s endorsement of changes in the 1974 constitution that would result in increased Serbian police and judicial authority in Kosovo.

The Albanians, in their demonstrations, have invoked the name of Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav postwar leader who devised the 1974 constitution that gave the Albanian population in Kosovo unprecedented control over their own affairs.

The turmoil over the issue of Serbian control over Kosovo has been raging since early this year, when Milosevic supporters began staging mass demonstrations to press for a revision of the 1974 constitution, and it has propelled Milosevic to national prominence in a political system that has been without a national leader since the death of Tito in 1980.

Milosevic’s movement, however, has reawakened nationalist tendencies in Yugoslavia and has stirred alarm in political leaders in Yugoslavia’s other five republics, who have always been wary of Serbian domination in the federation.