Yugoslav chief resigns

Press, 28 September 1988, Page 8

Yugoslav chief resigns

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade A Yugoslav Politburo member has quit, accusing leaders of the country’s Serbian republic of manipulating ethnic tensions and pushing the federation towards disaster. Franc Setinc submitted a letter of “irrevocable resignation” to the 23-member Communist Party Politburo yesterday, attacking Serbian nationalism as “mindlessness which before everyone’s eyes is pushing us to a disaster and we do little to stop it.” Mr Setinc, from Slovenia, said he was not condemning the hundreds of thousands of people who have protested against alleged persecution of Serbs and other Slavs by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, an autonomous province of Serbia.

“I am afraid of people who manipulate the grievances of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo,” he said, expressing fears that frequent calls for arms voiced at the protests threatened to set ablaze Kosovo and the whole of Yugoslavia. The demonstrators back the Serbian Communist Party’s drive for direct control over Kosovo and another province, Vojvodina. Leaders of the westernised republics of Croatia and Slovenia have said the protests could have catastrophic consequences and the leadership of Yugoslavia’s official Socialist Youth Alliance said yesterday that the country was nearing “fratricidal war.” Yugoslavia’s collective State presidency said in a statement that 1270 non-Albanians had left Kosovo in the first six months of this year.