Overview of the week's top stories
since 25 May 2002

Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek has apparently changed his mind yet again, and is expected to announce his candidacy in the upcoming presidential election by the middle of June. He will run under the banner of the LDS, the party he leads.

Many leading politicians were critical of the prime minister. SLS Leader Franci But told STA that "if he were taking this decision seriously, the prime minister would not be changing his mind from week to week."

The SMS was a bit more forceful, saying that Drnovšek’s indecisiveness "is fair to neither the voters nor to the other possible candidates or even to the institution of the presidency."

The presidential race is already shaping up to be tough. On 4 June, former governor of the Bank of Slovenia France Arhar announced his intentions to enter the race, and should be a major contender. His considerable popular support is based on his successes at the national bank. Arhar is currently the head of the state insurance company Vzajemna (Mutual).

Arhar said he will not seek the endorsement of any party; he will register his candidacy with the required five thousand voters' signatures. "If the collecting of signatures is not successful, then it is better that I resign my candidacy," Arhar said at a 4 June press conference. He did say, however, that he will accept the support of any party. It appears that the SLS will support his candidacy.

According to Delo, "Arhar will undoubtedly be one of the most serious candidates for the post of President of the Republic." Opinion polls support that statement.

But Prime Minister Drnovšek’s party, the LDS, was not shaken by the announcement. Asked to comment on whether Arhar's decision might make Drnovšek change his mind again, Dnevnik reports that an LDS spokesman said "Arhar's candidacy will have an influence similar to that of the movements of Martian moons on events in Galaxy NGS 5907."

Also this week, Marko Kožar announced his intention to run as the candidate of the Patriotic List of Independent Citizens of Velika Lašča. He expects the support of DeSUS.

On 5 June, the Belgrade daily Blic and the weekly Nedeljni Telegraf linked the port of Koper to the recent Balkan cigarette-smuggling affair. Both further allege that Adria Airways is also implicated, particularly its regular Ljubljana – Priština flights.

Both the Port of Koper and Adria Airways issued statements denying any involvement.

Blic alleges that many of the cigarettes come into Koper and then make their way to Varna, in Bulgaria, by ship. From there, they go by truck into Serbia. Another pathway, according to Blic, is via the Albanian port of Drac, then through Macedonia and Kosovo into Serbia. Blic did not name its sources.

Nedeljni Telegraf believes that people close to the Kosovo Liberation Army are also involved. The weekly’s contacts with the Serbian customs authorities said that contraband cigarettes from Austria and Croatia also entered Serbia in the last year via Maribor and Kelebija, Hungary.

In Serbia, however, another branch of the Karađorđević family has been successful in its attempts to reclaim its property.

The news weekly Mladina and the daily Finance are both going to court, in two unrelated cases which are bringing freedom of the press and journalistic ethics into the spotlight.

The article concerned a suit filed against Pogorevc with the Ljubljana district prosecutor's office in which he is accused of attempted rape. That case is still in the courts. Additional comments in the magazine's "Mladinamit" feature are also included in the suit.

Pogorevc says that the article has violated his constitutional rights to corporal and spiritual integrity, privacy and personal freedoms as well as the constitutional guarantee of presumed innocence until guilt is proven. Pogorevc has supported his case with the statement of a court psychiatrist who confirms that Pogorevc has had stress-related suffering as the result of the article. He is seeking SIT 2,340,700 (USD 9,400) in damages.

Just days later, Finance reported that the director of the Tax Administration of the Republic of Slovenia (DURS) Stojan Grilj is suing the daily and journalist Jandranka Rebernik for SIT two million (USD 8,000) for publishing an article which has caused him similar stress-related suffering.

The article, published on 20 September 2001, concerned irregularities in the rental of premises in the building where DURS has its headquarters.

Grilj’s case is based on the same constitutional guarantees as Pogorevc’s. Both Mladina and Finance deny any wrongdoing.

On 30 May, amendments to the law on limiting the use of tobacco products was sent to parliament by the government. The changes are part of the process of harmonizing national legislation with that of the European Union. The amendments will introduce new regulations for additives to tobacco, as well as for packaging and sales of tobacco products.

According to the amendments, the legal quantity of tar will fall from twelve to ten milligrams, the highest legal quantity of nicotine will be one milligram and the highest legal quantity of carbon monoxide will now be ten milligrams.

Packaging will be required to advertise the dangers of smoking. Thirty percent of the front will have to carry warnings such as "smoking kills;" forty percent of the back will be given over to one of fourteen warnings such as "your doctor or pharmacist can help you quit smoking" or "smoking can damage sperm and lower fertility."

Additionally, fifteen percent of one side panel will feature the tar, nicotine and now carbon monoxide content. No packaging will be permitted to use the words Lahka (light), Nizka Vsebnost (low quantity) or Mild, which could be misleading.

While these changes will not be welcomed by the tobacco industry, one other change almost certainly will. In order to match the EU’s regulations on free movement of goods, Slovenia’s ban on cigarette vending machines must be lifted. It will still be illegal to sell tobacco products to those under the age of 15, and so it is predicted that special tokens for the new vending machines will be sold at outlets where tobacco products are sold.

Spain currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union and Slovenia raised its profile in Madrid by staging a Week of Slovene Culture from 3 to 9 June. The opening event was a Slovene Youth Theatre production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the 400-seat Fernando Rojas theatre.

Unofficial reports on 5 June hinted that Slovene national soccer team coach Srečko Katanec had sent the team's star player, Zlatko Zahovič, back to Slovenia. The situation was apparently so tense that President Milan Kučan intervened in a letter personally asking Katanec and Zahovič to resolve their differences.

On Thursday, the Slovene Soccer Federation met with the two and announced that an agreement had been made to allow Zahovič to stay. STA reported that Katanec took the news professionally, though in a public statement he did break down in tears. “I am proud that I am a Slovene and I am proud that my parents are Croats,” he said, referring to an ethnic slur Zahovič reportedly made against him.

• On 5 June, activists in Zagreb began a petition to have the nuclear plant at Krško closed. Ownership of the plant has been the subject of a dispute between Slovenia and Croatia for a decade. The petition calls on the Croatian parliament to refuse to ratify the Croatian-Slovene agreement on the plant until a referendum is held to decide whether Croatians want to keep their share of the plant or to channel money intended to renovate it into seeking out alternative sources of energy.

• On 25 May, the drag-trio Sestre placed 14^th at the Eurosong contest in Tallinn, Estonia. The Latvian representative took first. Despite the disappointing showing, sponsors all told Finance that they are not disappointed at all in Sestre. Delo was not disappointed either. "...Sestre attracted more attention than any other performer," the daily boasted, also pointing out that Sestre gave more than 200 interviews while in Tallinn.

• Amnesty International's 2001 report on human rights released last week did not include Slovenia, but local representatives for the organization say that this does not mean there were no violations. They have simply decided to address incidents of police brutality and continuing problems with refugees in different manners. Slovenia was mentioned in the report for the first time ever last year.