World Notes

Virtually rudderless after months of ethnic violence and political strife, Yugoslavia was left without a helmsman last week. Croatia's Stipe Mesic, 57, was to assume the rotating leadership of the country's collective federal presidency, made up of representatives from each of the six republics and two provinces. But the routine vote turned into a crisis when Communist-ruled Serbia and three of its allies refused to approve Mesic, fearful that he might promote the country's disintegration. Said Borisav Jovic, the Serbian representative who led the presidency for the past year: "No country can vote for a man as President who aims to destroy the system he heads."

The political vacuum can only deepen Yugoslavia's state of shock. Serbia, the largest republic in the troubled Balkan country of 23 million, is struggling to preserve its power over federal institutions, including the army. But the federation itself has been stumbling toward dissolution since free elections last year installed non-Communist governments in the republics of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia.

So far this month, at least 20 people have died in the country's bloodiest conflicts between Serbs and Croats since World War II.