Power vacuum after Tito aide’s death

Press, 12 February 1979, Page 8

Power vacuum after Tito aide’s death

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade The death of Edvard Kardelj, long regarded as the most likely successor of , President Josip Tito, has left . an important gap in Yugos- | lavia’s political leadership. J Mr Kardelj, President . Tito’s closest aide and the . chief theorist of Yugos- ■ lavia’s unorthodox indepen- j dent brand of communism, died on Saturday at the age , of 69. Official sources said he had suffered from cancer for five years. The 86-year-old President Tito, on a two-week tour of the Middle East, was due to fly on from Syria to Jordan yesterday, but officials said he would shorten his scheduled trip to attend Mr Kardelj’s State funeral on TuesJ day in Ljubljana, north western Yugoslavia. ! Mr Kardelj was a member of the nine-man collective State Presidency and the 24-i jman party presidency —I

both headed by President Tito.

Even more importantly, he was the President’s closest confidant and friend. He served at President Tito’s side for more than four decades, giving an ideological basis to Yugoslavia’s policies of workers’ selfmanagement at home and independence abroad after a traumatic break with the Soviet bloc in 1948.

His death has also deprived Yugoslavia of the only figure whose conciliatory attitudes and long period at the top would have made him easily acceptable to most Yugoslavs as the next leader of this country, with its ethnic and cultural divergencies and deep-rooted historical anomosities.

If Mr Kardelj had survived President Tito, he would have been certain of [taking his place, at least for I the key interim period. !