HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------[Note the census is not being carried out in Montenegro and Kosovo, seing as within ten years these definately won't be united in a common state with Serbia. This is a further disgusting indication of what Yugoslav authorities think of the states sovereignty over its WHOLE territory. Backing down to the anti-democratic Djukanovic regime and the collaborationist and secessionist KLA and LDK elites has been a hallmark of the Belgrade authorities.]
Yugoslavia Conducts Census
.c The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Officials began conducting the first census Monday since the former Yugoslavia began to break up a decade ago in a series of wars that brought major demographic changes to the region.
Some 40,000 census takers fanned across Serbia, the larger of two remaining Yugoslav republics, to gather statistics on the size, economic strength and ethnic and religious composition of the population.
Officials planned to survey an area where some 7.5 million people lived in 1991, according to the country's last census.
The government of Yugoslavia's smaller republic, Montenegro, has said it would carry out a separate census at a later date. Montenegro's population was last recorded at slightly more than 600,000.
Serbia's southern province of Kosovo, under NATO and U.N. control since 1999, will be excluded from the survey.
Until an uprising in 1998 by Kosovo's pro-independence ethnic Albanians, the province's population was about 2 million. Some 10,000 people were believed killed in the war and about 800,000 ethnic Albanians were at one point forced out of their homes by government forces loyal to former President Slobodan Milosevic.
When NATO air strikes in 1999 forced Milosevic's troops out of the province, more than 200,000 Kosovo Serbs fled to Serbia.
The number of displaced people, including Serb refugees who fled to Serbia from neighboring Bosnia and Croatia, is also to be established by the census. The refugee population is believed at more than 500,000, while at least 200,000 Serbians are believed to have migrated abroad, fleeing poverty and the wars of the 1990s.
Normally carried out every 10 years, the census planned for 2001 was postponed by the current leadership, which ousted Milosevic in Oct. 2000. Leaders said they wanted to give priority to stabilizing the country, which is still struggling after a decade of wars and international sanctions.
The census is scheduled to be completed April 15. Preliminary results are expected to be released in May, with final processing of the data due by the end of the year.
AP-NY-04-01-02 0955EST
--------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST
==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
