Book On Western Balkans Launched in Ljubljana

Ljubljana, 27 November (STA) - A book entitled "The Balkan Conflict and Its Solutions - Creating Conditions for Peace, Stability and Development in the Western Balkans" was launched in Ljubljana on Tuesday, its author Franjo Stiblar saying it was intended above all as a way of helping the region to finally get well.
Stiblar, a political economy professor and the dean of the Ljubljana Faculty of Law, said at today's book launch that the work was a result of several years of research at home an abroad.
It includes the latest data on the situation in the countries of the Western Balkans, that is the states of the former Yugoslavia, minus Slovenia and plus Albania.

It provides an economic and social forecast and concrete proposals for improving the situation in the region. Slovenia is used as a comparison and an example.

Stiblar used a combination of different factors to calculate the probability of a new conflict in the individual parts of the Western Balkans. According to him, conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and especially in Kosovo is much more probable than it was in 1990.

He meanwhile puts down the continuing peace there to "antibiotics" which are in place today (such as the presence of the international community), but were not there in the beginning of the 1990s.

Stiblar puts forward as the best solution to the Kosovo issue - given that Belgrade and Pristina are not able to reach a compromise - a division of territory.

He believes both sides would prefer full sovereignty over a part of the territory over partial sovereignty across the entire territory and warns that any other solution would hurt one of the sides and cause new strife.

At the panel, attended also by President-elect Danilo Tuerk and the ambassadors of Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, Stiblar highlighted as the book's biggest advantage the fact that it was not merely "politicising" but also offered concrete proposals.

STA English News/Provider: Slovene Press Agency
November 27, 2007