YUGOSLAV Airlines' Flight 367 from Stockholm to Belgrade had just passed over the northern border of Czechoslovakia last week when an explosion shook the plane. The bomb-stricken DC-9 fell from the skies and crashed near the Bohemian town of Česká Kamenice, killing all but one of the 28 people aboard. A few hours later, another bomb went off on the Ljubljana-to-Belgrade express outside Zagreb, injuring six passengers.
Both blasts, it appears certain, were the work of émigré Croatian terrorists, who want independence for their homeland from rule by Yugoslavia's central government. The well-timed incidents provided a grim counterpoint to an urgent meeting of Yugoslav political leaders in Belgrade. As a result of earlier separatist agitation in Croatia (TIME, Dec. 27), which had been a direct challenge to Yugoslavia's federal system, President Josip Broz Tito, nearly 80 but amazingly robust, had summoned 367 of the nation's political leaders to Belgrade for a three-day party conference. The basic issue in the talks: How much political and economic freedom can Yugoslavia give to its six republics and two autonomous provinces without coming apart at the seams?
Doing His Utmost. Yugoslavia's separatist problem has become worse at the very time when Tito is doing his utmost to solve it. His efforts have centered on an attempt to reduce tensions between the Serbs, Yugoslavia's dominant group (8.5 million), and the neighboring Croats, who are the country's second most numerous nationality (4.3 million) and politically its most troublesome. Relations between the two ethnic groups, never good, were tragically bloodied during World War II when pro-Nazi Croats slaughtered some 100,000 Serbs living in Croatia.
Last summer Tito persuaded the Federal Parliament to pass a number of sweeping constitutional amendments that gave to all the republics almost complete autonomy in economic, cultural and administrative matters. Later Croatia was allowed to keep a far larger share of the foreign currency that it earns from Western tourists. By then, however, a dangerous momentum had developed. To pressure the central government into making greater concessions, Croatia's Communist leaders—notably Miko Tripalo and Dr. Savka Dabčevič-Kučar, the woman Central Committee chief—allied themselves with groups making extremist demands for what would have amounted to secession. Pockets of Croatian exiles, who are active in Western Europe, Canada and the U.S., also began to agitate for independence.
In the wake of the student strike in Zagreb last November, which led to Tito's subsequent crackdown in Croatia, Yugoslav officials claim that the eleven accused ringleaders of the alleged conspiracy were plotting a full-scale general strike as a prelude to an uprising in support of Croatian independence. Meanwhile, some 400 Communist officials, including Tripalo and Dabčevič-Kučar, have been purged from their posts, and more firings may follow. The trials of the conspirators will probably begin in March.