Letter: Yugoslavia's 'secret'

Sir: Vivian Grisogovno asks (letter, 2 October) for the secret of how the various ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia 'can learn how to survive in their own homes'. There is no secret. For decades those communities lived at peace in the Yugoslav Federation.

By espousing the slogans of 'Western liberal democracy', the present regime under President Tudjman was embraced by the Western governments and by some influential, but misled, public figures.

Sadly, Mr Tudjman's young 'democracy' fell at the first hurdle, by producing a constitution in which ethnic minorities are, at best, second-class citizens. The now defunct Zagreb daily Danas published in one of its last issues (February 1992) an article explaining that the Croatian law on citizenship does not afford equal rights to non-Croat minorities.

Yours faithfully,

VLADA VJESTICA

Oxford

4 October