Overview of the week's top stories
since 15 September 2001

The tragic events of Tuesday, 11 September 2001 in the United States continued to be felt this week. Parliament declared 14 September a National Day of Mourning and flags flew at half-mast throughout the country.

The country’s leadership is supporting the United States and its initiatives towards a global "War on Terrorism" with good reason: Slovenia is far from immune to the problem. The Balkan wars of the 1990s created an extensive criminal network that stretches into Slovenia. Thus far, the network mostly busies itself with drug smuggling and trafficking in human beings, but it could pose a terrorist threat to the country in the future.

Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek also called for a measured response. "Terrorism and violence have never been and will never be the way to resolve problems, neither the problems of the world nor other problems. All violence breeds new violence and I am profoundly convinced that any kind of problem must be solved differently, through dialogue, efforts towards a peaceful solution."

The country’s intelligentsia interpreted the situation quite differently. Andrej Kurnik, a prominent political scientist, told the daily Dnevnik: "…that attack was not the beginning of some new war, as the world media tells us. That attack was just one of the tragic episodes of the new war which has shaken the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall."

Americans now have a choice, he says. They can either retreat further into isolationism, or step out of their ‘sphere’ into the ‘Real world.’ "America’s ‘holiday from history’ was a fake: America’s peace was bought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere. Therein resides the true lesson of the bombings: the only way to ensure that it will not happen here again is to prevent it from going on anywhere else."

The terrorist attacks in the United States do not seem to have generated a passionate response in the average citizen. Only about 50 people showed up on Wednesday at a peace march in Ljubljana organized by the non-governmental organization Humanitas. The group assembled at Metelkova, and marched to the American embassy near Tivoli park. They placed candles across the street from the embassy, as heightened security would not allow them near the building.

While in Maribor, the prime minister also met with other representatives of the disgruntled Maribor elite, including Stanislav Holc, head of the Gibanje za Ljudi (The Movement for People) which has already amassed more than 30,000 signatures in protest of the Holding decision.

Drnovšek was taking notes, and on Thursday he presented Maribor’s position to parliament. He also requested that parliament draw up a list of state institutions that could be moved out of Ljubljana rationally, maintaining their functionality.

Mercator owns more than 60 shops in Croatia, including a hypermarket in Pula. Hypermarkets are in the works for Split, Reka (Rijeka) and New Zagreb in the near future. The company’s investment in Croatia so far amounts to some DEM 131 million, with 74 million to come before the end of 2002. Mercator’s Croatian ventures bring in annual profits of about DEM 191.5 million.

The Klein & Klein agency presented the results of its Ugled 2001 (Reputation 2001) survey this week. The survey rates the 255 biggest companies in Slovenia based on a survey of 810 managers and 1000 members of the general public. Some of the highlights as published in the daily Finance are reprinted here:

Some of the icons from the 6^th and 7^th centuries A.D., though the majority are from the 9^th century, when the territory of modern Macedonia was part of the Roman Empire. Though composed in Byzantine styles, the icons have inscriptions in Latin. The rare icons are thought to be artifacts of an early campaign to Christianize the region.

"Icons from Vinica" has already traveled to 20 cities in 10 countries, and will be in Ljubljana until 17 October.