Overview of the week's top stories
since 2 February 2003

During his presentation of evidence against Iraq at the United Nations on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned Slovenia as one country from which Iraq has tried to purchase prohibited materials.

"In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant," he said. Powell added that Iraq wanted the plant to make magnets that could be used in the process of creating a nuclear weapon.

Foreign Minister Rupel said that he believes that Powell was recognizing the country’s contributions to the US-led war on terror when he mentioned Slovenia explicitly.

On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Rok Srakar told the Associated Press that the Slovene government prevented the sale of "materials that could be used to enrich uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons."

As far as the Iraq crisis itself goes, the Slovene government is supporting the EU position that UN weapons inspectors need more time before there is any discussion of an attack. However, it has also aligned itself with the Vilnius Group of ten Central and Eastern European states which have ambitions of joining NATO. The group is supporting the US decision to take military action if Iraq fails to cooperate with the United Nations.

On Wednesday, Finance reported that according to GDP per capita, Slovenia ranks fifth among the regions of the countries acceding to the EU. The data was released by Eurostat, and comes from 2000. According to Slovenia’s accession negotiations, the entire country is counted as a single region for European Union purposes.

Leading the pack is the Prague region of the Czech Republic, with 121 percent of the EU average. Next comes Slovakia’s Bratislava region, with 98 percent of the EU average, followed by Cyprus and Southern Hungary, each with 76 percent.

For Finance, Boštjan Usenik took Slovene data for the central Slovenia region around Ljubljana and compared it to the Eurostat data. He found that the region placed third with 90 percent of the EU average, behind the Prague and Bratislava regions.

On 31 January, the South East European Media Organization (SEEMO) released its annual report which showed that there were 14 violations of press freedom in 2002 in Slovenia.

This compares to 18 in Albania, 57 in Bosnia, 16 in Bulgaria, 31 in Croatia, 43 in Cyprus, 6 in Greece, 33 in Moldova, 41 in Macedonia, 58 in Romania and 125 in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (64 in Serbia, 24 in Montenegro and 37 in Kosovo).

Additionally, a regional press freedom meeting of investigative reporters in Slovenia was held in May 2002 in cooperation with the Austrian Association of Newspapers as part of the organization’s operations for the year.

On 8 February, Slovenia celebrates Prešeren Day, the national holiday dedicated to the country’s greatest nineteenth-century poet, France Prešeren. Kranj, center of the Gorenjska region, will host one of the more prominent observances.

A highlight of Prešeren Day in Kranj is an exhibit called "The Restoration of Prešeren Monuments in Gorenjska," which highlights restoration work conducted in the last ten years at sites connected to the poet.

Several sites in Kranj are included in the exhibit, including the Prešeren monument on the town’s main square (restored between 1998 and 1999) and the poet’s grave (restored in 2000).

The poet’s nearby hometown of Vrba na Gorenjskem is represented in the exhibit by the Church of St. Mark, restored in 1988.

The theatre’s original home was the Narodni Dom in Trieste, built between 1902 and 1904 by the celebrated Slovene architect Maks Fabiani. The Narodni Dom was torched by Italian fascists in 1920. In 1927, the fascist regime banned Slovene cultural activity, forcing the SSG to suspend production until the end of the second World War.

The SSG found a new home in the Arts Center, where it has been based since 1964.

The SSG also opened an exhibit about its activities between 1945 and 1965, which was organized by Ljubljana’s Slovene Theatre Museum. A photo-book of SSG activities from 1985 to 2002 as well as a monograph about the SSG were also published for the event.

On 3 February, four employees of the Slovene-language radio station Radio Dva started a hunger strike in Austria’s Carinthia (Koroška) region. They are protesting the decision of state radio and television service ORF to end financial support for Radio Dva, and a lack of concern on the part of the federal government.

Slovene minority leaders will bring their case to European institutions next week. They plan to meet with representatives of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Strasbourg, as well as with the Intergroup for Regional or Minority Languages in the European Parliament.

A 2001 broadcasting law required ORF to provide services for Austria’s minorities in their own languages. However, ORF backed out of Radio Dva on 1 January 2003, citing financial difficulties. Since then, the station’s five permanent employees and roughly 25 freelancers have been working without pay. Radio Dva premiered in 1998 and provides twelve hours of Slovene-language programming each day.

Maribor-based Radio Slovenija International (SI) recently joined with other Central European radio stations in preparing the English-language program "Insight Central Europe." This is the first time a Slovene station has participated in the project, which is co-financed by the European Commission.

Radio Austria International launched Insight Central Europe in April 2002, with participation from radio stations in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The first segment of the 30-minute program presents the various countries’ points of view on topics related to EU enlargement, while the second segment presents various stories from the countries involved. Although Radio SI does not run the entire program, it does run individual reports on Fridays and Saturdays.

The film is set and was mostly filmed in the director’s hometown, Krško, near the border with Croatia. A gala preview held there on 31 January was attended by nearly 2000 people.

On 13 February, a Kolosej multiplex will open in the coastal town of Koper. The building will contain three theatres, one with 219 seats, a one with 96 and the last with 48.

The country’s first multiplex, a 12-screen Kolosej, opened in Ljubljana in May 2001.

Koper’s Kolosej will feature many of the same services as Ljubljana’s, including the M-vstopnica program which allows movie-goers to reserve tickets with cell phones. According to Finance, the multiplex expects 8,500 to 10,000 visitors monthly.

• The Maribor-based Macedonian cultural society Biljana is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Biljana has more than 200 members and is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Macedonian culture and language in Slovenia. It is most active in the field of folklore, and has staged performances for events throughout the country, as well as in Macedonia and in Germany.

• On 8 February, the new Viba film studio will open in Ljubljana. The site has nearly 10,000 quadratic meters of space for film production and post-production, and will also house administrative offices. The new studio will offer producers standards on par with those of other European national film producers. The new post-production facilities will be the most important part, since the process generally takes two to three times longer than in other European countries due to a lack of state-of-the-art equipment.

• On 8 February, Vlado Kreslin read from his new book of poetry, Vriskanje in jok (Screaming and Crying) at Sarajevo’s Sarajevska zima festival. Kresliin is a central figure on the Slovene music scene. Vriskanje in jok was published by Novo Mesto’s Goga publishing house. The event also featured other Goga writers, and was organized by the local Slovene cultural society Ivan Cankar.