Overview of the week's top stories since 5 April 2003

• European Parliament endorses expansion
• Journalists protest US actions in Iraq
• Constitutional Court restores the Izbrisani
• Controversy erupts over diplomatic academy
• Krško elects Roma representative
• Seventh daily newspaper to appear this fall
• Festival of Slovene Film preparations underway

And in other news…

• UK Financial Times releases annual survey of Slovenia
• Radio Dva employees resolve to continue broadcasting
• Novice premiers in Austrian Carinthia
• Sanje publishes new Vladimir Bartol collection

On Tuesday, US forces bombed the Baghdad headquarters of the Arabic television station Al Jazeera, killing one of their reporters. That same day, a US tank fired into the Hotel Palestine, home base for many foreign correspondents in Baghdad, resulting in the death of two journalists working for Reuters. Many others were wounded in both incidents.

US spokesmen have stated that neither attack was aimed at journalists. The Al Jazeera bombing was chalked up to being an accident, while US spokesmen say that the tank which fired into the Hotel Palestine was forced to hit the building because someone was shooting at it from within the building. Journalists at the hotel have refuted this explanation.

International journalist organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and Reporters without Borders have also accused the US of targeting journalists.

Of the Parliament’s 626 representatives, 566 were present for the vote. Slovenia fared well, with 522 votes for its membership, 22 against and 22 abstentions. Together with two other countries, it received the most votes of support.

On 23 March, nearly 90 percent of voters in Slovenia supported joining the EU in a referendum. Turnout was surprisingly high at about 60 percent. Malta supported EU membership in a referendum the week before; Hungary is set to hold a similar referendum on 12 April.

Next week, on 16 April, accession agreements for all ten acceding countries will be signed in Athens, marking the formal end of the membership negotiation process. The membership of the acceding countries still must be ratified by the parliaments of the current EU members, which is expected to be done before the middle of next year.

On 3 April, the Constitutional Court finally resolved the case of the so-called izbrisani ("erased"). The izbrisani are citizens of other republics of the former Yugoslavia who were living in Slovenia at the time of independence but who did not have, or otherwise qualify for, citizenship in the newly independent country. The government revoked their permanent resident status and erased them wholesale from the registries. The act has been called a "soft genocide" by activists.

The Court has ruled that the Law on the Regulation of the Status of Citizens of Other Successor States to the Former Yugoslavia from 1992 is unconstitutional, and that all of the izbrisani must have their residency rights returned. The government has six months in which to bring the law into alignment with the constitution, based on the Court’s decision.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there were 18,305 citizens of other Yugoslav republics living in Slovenia in 1992 who had permanent resident status, though unofficial accounts put the figure as high as 30,000. Of the Ministry’s figure, 12,937 have applied for citizenship under procedures introduced later. Some 10,713 have since gotten citizenship. But according to unofficial estimates, 3000 to 4000 people are still without formal legal status in the country.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs found itself in the middle of a controversy this week when the media alleged it will help create a new diplomacy program at a school based in Primorska, abandoning the current program at the University of Ljubljana.

The Law on Foreign Relations provides for a diplomatic academy to be established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until lately, the academy functioned as part of the Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Ljubljana.

The controversy hinged on the details. First, the PFDA is not registered anywhere, and so it does not yet formally exist. The Council on Higher Education must still approve its program.

More significantly, Mladina wrote that Rupel himself has signed on to teach full time at the PFDA. The news weekly pointed out that this is not just an ethnical dilemma; it borders on corruption.

Delo spoke to Boštjan Penko, head of the Office for the Prevention of Corruption, who agreed. He said that the third article of the agreement between the ministry and the PFDA, which states that the ministry will provide resources for the diplomatic program, "shows abuse of public function for personal gain," given that Rupel is supposed to teach at the school. According to media accounts, the ministry pledged T 8 million ($ 37,200)

By Friday, however, 24 ur reported that PFDA director Boštjan Još Turk has denied that the ministry has anything to do with his school. He said that the ministry is not participating in the establishment of the PFDA, nor will the ministry fund its operation. Turk said the school will be entirely supported by tuition, which will be comparable to those of the Universities of Ljubljana and Maribor. He did not mention whether Rupel is expected to lecture there.

Roma in Krško hope that special representation on the city council will better their lot. Aside from the proper settlements in and near the town, there are four Roma settlements around Krško that are illegal: Kerinov grm, Loke, Drnovo and Rimš. The town is trying to legalize the largest, Kerinov grm, in order to help it get basic utilities, such as water, electricity and plumbing. Rimš also lacks basic utilities, while Loke and Drnovo only have water and electricity intermittently. Roma want to see living conditions in all four settlements brought up to standard.

Roma in Krško also face those difficulties common to many of their compatriots, such as high levels of unemployment and discrimination.

A 2001 Constitutional Court ruling required twenty town councils across the country to create a seat for a Roma representative, but by the November 2002 local elections, only fourteen had amended their statutes accordingly. One more, Trebnje, permitted the election of a Roma even though its statutes did not allow for this. The other five towns protested to the Constitutional Court, which upheld its earlier ruling.

The Krško election came just before the Roma community celebrated International Roma Day, on Tuesday, 8 April. The central commemoration in Slovenia was organized in Puconci, in Prekmurje, by the Union of Roma (ZRS) on Saturday. Key-note speaker Janez Obrez, director of the Office for Nationalities, said that while the Roma’s living conditions in Slovenia are improving, much work remains to be done. He praised the introduction of Roma representatives to city councils, pointing out that most European countries do not provide that right.

On Friday, Finance reported that publishing houses Dnevnik and Salomon are planning to publish a new daily newspaper, tentatively called Jasno (Clearly), sometime this fall. The paper is being designed to challenge the supremacy of Slovenske novice – which is associated with Delo – on the market.

Slovenske novice and Finance are the only dailies currently on the market that began publication after Slovene independence in 1991. Other attempts have failed due to the massively competitive market, as well as to internal difficulties. In June 1991, a daily called Slovenec started publication, but folded in November 1996; another, called Republika, published from 1992 until 1996; and the least successful, called Jutranjik, lasted only for the month of June 1998.

Some suspect that the appearance of Jasno may mean the end of the weekly newsmagazine Mag, but Finance was unable to confirm this. They did, however, confirm that Dnevnik will continue. By all accounts, Jasno will be a self-contained project. For now, Dnevnik and Salomon are preparing the content and hiring staff. Jasno should begin publishing sometime this fall.

The 30^th anniversary will be celebrated with a retrospective of a selection of films that have won the festival in the past. The retrospective will start before the official kick-off of the festival, which will run from 24 to 27 September.

• Even though Radio Dva, a Slovene-language radio station in Austrian Carinthia (Koroška), is filing for bankruptcy, its employees have resolved to continue to broadcast through this month. Until January, Radio Dva was sponsored by the Austrian government via national broadcaster ORF, and provided 24-hour Slovene-language radio for the country’s ethnic Slovene minority. In February and again in March, Radio Dva journalists went on hunger strikes in protest. Late last month, ORF promised a new Slovene-language radio station, which is Radio Dva’s best hope for now. None of Radio Dva’s employees have been paid since January, and their unemployment benefits ran out at the end of March.

• Despite problems with one of its partners, the new Slovene-language weekly bulletin Novice (News) appeared on Friday in Klagenfurt (Celovec) and throughout Austrian Carinthia. The paper was distributed on Friday, with a print run of 3500. Novice is intended to unite the National Council of Carinthian Slovenes (NSKS) publication Naš tednik and the Federation of Slovene Organizations (ZSO) publication Slovenske vesti, but due to concerns at the NSKS, Naš tednik is still publishing. Novice is supposed to be independent of both groups, however. It is formally published by a new group called Slomedia, which is planning to expand into the internet with a bilingual German and Slovene portal, which will also contain a German-language version of the magazine.