>From Don Search W3AZD:
> Here is an excerpt from the Newscape News web site:
>> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Lawmakers formally abolished
> Yugoslavia on Tuesday, replacing it with a loose union of its
> remaining two republics, Serbia and Montenegro.
> The approval by the two chambers of the Yugoslav parliament
> marked the demise of the troubled Balkan federation and the birth
> of a new country called Serbia and Montenegro, as outlined in a
> deal brokered by the European Union.
> The accord preserves the alliance of Serbia and Montenegro as
> the last of the six republics that once made up Yugoslavia. Before
> the wars in the 1990s, the federation also included Bosnia,
> Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia.
> The lower chamber of the parliament voted 84-31, confirming an
> earlier 26-7 vote in the upper chamber.
> Serbia and Montenegro opted in 1992 to stay together as a rump
> Yugoslav federation. But the relations of the two republics have
> since soured - especially under the former federal president
> Slobodan Milosevic - and the EU last year mediated a deal aiming to
> prevent new upheaval in the volatile Balkans.
> The agreement envisages almost complete sovereignty for the two
> republics, which will be linked only by a small joint
> administration running defense and foreign affairs. Serbia's
> capital, Belgrade, will remain the capital of the whole country.
> ``It is in the interest of both Serbia and Montenegro to stay
> together,'' said Serbia's vice-premier Miodrag Isakov,
> acknowledging that the republics ``could go either way from here
> ... creating a truly functional union or going completely separate
> ways.''
> The deal allows Serbia and Montenegro to hold referendums on
> full independence in three years.
> The arrangement also is meant to appease a strong independence
> movement in Montenegro, the smaller republic. Montenegro's
> leadership began boycotting federal institutions in 1998, prompting
> some Serbians, too, to demand a separation.
> Nationalist parties in both Serbia and Montenegro have opposed
> the reform, citing the need to preserve deep historical ties
> between the republics. Others, demanding outright separation,
> criticized the plan for not going far enough.
> ``What you are doing here is a coup,'' Serbia's ultranationalist
> leader Vojislav Seselj said to other lawmakers, describing the
> reform as a de-facto dissolution of the country.
> ``We are burying Yugoslavia today,'' said lawmaker Aleksandar
> Simic of Milosevic's Socialist party. ``I think it was a good
> country and I don't know why so many remain keen to destroy it.''
> Yugoslavia was first founded in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs,
> Croats and Slovenes. The former kingdom became a Communist-run,
> six-republic, federation after World War II.
> Although Yugoslavia ceased to exist with the parliamentary vote,
> its state institutions will continue to operate until a new
> parliament, president and a council of ministers are elected in the
> coming weeks.
> The state reform leaves Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica -
> who ousted Milosevic at an election in 2000 - without an official
> position.
> ``We now look forward to the early ... establishment of the new
> institutions,'' said Britain's Foreign Office Minister Denis
> MacShane in a statement, praising Tuesday's development as a
> ``significant step forward by which Serbia and Montenegro towards
> closer integration with Europe.''
>