As in a school-yard brawl, the opening provocation was a taunt: "Independence!" But within 36 hours, the war of words between the republic of Slovenia and forces of the Yugoslav People's Army had escalated into a real fight, with the two sides trading lethal blows that left at least 40 dead and many more injured.
While Slovenia had been voicing separatist ambitions for months, few could have predicted that the situation would career so quickly to the edge of civil war. Time and again during the past year, ethnic and political tensions in and among the six republics and two semiautonomous...
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