Gallup, Budapest, 1998 March


Strong opposition found among former Yugoslav
states concerning Kosovo question

One fourth of the people in the region expects an all-out war in Kosovo

Support of demands of Kosovo Albanians

The results on the question regarding support of Kosovo Albanians for political autonomy divided the responding members of former Yugoslavia’s nations.

On one side Gallup found that Sarajevo, Mostar, Zagreb and Ljubljana are the urban centers in which Albanian autonomy is basically supported, while Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis, Banja Luka, Skopje and surprisingly Kosovo don’t seem to support Kosovo Albanians. Just to remember: the leading Kosovo elite at that time already moved from demanding political autonomy to demanding full independence from Yugoslav Federation.

Our respondents from Crna Gora had mixed feelings at that time, being part of the Yugoslav Federation, they had sharp conflicts with President Milosevic. Bulatovic just fall out of power and Djukanovic arrived with more articulate regional demands.

We also conducted this survey in Macedonia, where significant Albanian minority is living; Skopje is considered as being part of Greater Albania, present in Albanian nationalists’ dreams for about a century now. We measured quite low tolerance towards Kosovo autonomy in Skopje.

Future development of Kosovo crisis

In March, 1998, people were optimistic about the future in Kosovo compared to what we see today. The majority of all the countries urban adult population throughout the former Yugoslav realm thought that the crisis won't escalate in the province in the level it did in Bosnia. This question was only put to those who were more closely involved to the crisis. Our Montenegrian respondents were the most pessimistic, while those were in the war zone (Mostar and Sarajevo) and respondents from Kosovo (Pristina) proved to be more optimistic about the future. Interesting to see, that two out of ten people living in urban centers of Yugoslavia believed that the Kosovo crisis could turn to a war similar to the Bosnian one.

Attitudes about international intervention

Based on previous experiences these counties divide in evaluating a possible foreign intervention if crisis escalates. As the chart shows, the most interventionist respondents are from the cities that gained territory after the intervention of NATO in 1995 in Bosnia.

But, except for the Serbian-realm, there is a definite wish to have international forces intervene and stop killing in Kosovo. It's interesting to see, how much one nation prefers NATO as peacekeeping / peace implementation forces, while others would prefer EU in the same role.

It seems that NATO's commitment in the Bosnian war resulted a certain antypathy from the side of the Orthodox Christian nations in the region, while Croats and Moslems trust NATO enormously.

In each country of the former Yugoslavia an average of 300 telephone interviews were conducted. In each country only a selection of larger cities was involved in the survey; Slovenia (Ljubljana: 300), Croatia (Zagreb: 310), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mostar: 165, Banja Luka: 100, Sarajevo: 100), Serbia (Belgrade: 300, Nis: 200, Novi Sad: 200, Pristina: 300), Montenegro (Podgorica: 202) and Macedonia (Skopje: 307). The interviews were conducted by telephone, the respondents were randomly selected from directory.