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History"Yugoslavia" was replaced, on 4 February 2003, by the union of "Serbia and Montenegro." On that day the Yugoslav parliament ratified a constitutional charter creating a new government and country name. Yugoslavia ("land of southern Slavs") was born of an attempt to unify the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918. Serbia, the largest Yugoslav republic in area and population, had always sought to dominate Yugoslavia. The country was held together by force - first under kings then under a communist government - until 1991-92 when Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army invaded Slovenia and Croatia, and civil war erupted with Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia. All four countries eventually won their independence. By 1992, all that was left of Yugoslavia was Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia's ensuing brutal war in Kosovo, caused Montenegro to distance itself from Slobodan Milosevic and his Yugoslav government. Kosovo, a province of Serbia, has an ethnic Albanian majority that wanted - and still wants - independence. The war in Kosovo ended in 1999 only after NATO bombed Serbia and the UN made Kosovo an international protectorate. Today Serbia and Montenegro is a democratic union of two republics with a small central government. Both republics agreed to the union because of their desire to join the European Union. However, the constitutional charter allows either Serbia or Montenegro to hold an independence referendum in 2006. Ongoing Disputes: The protection of the rights of ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo region; several ethnic Albanian groups in Kosovo voice union with Albania; boundary disputes with Bosnia and Herzegovina; in late 2002, Serbia and Montenegro and Croatia adopted an interim agreement to settle the disputed Prevlaka Peninsula, allowing the withdrawal of the UN monitoring mission (UNMOP), but discussions could be complicated by the inability of Serbia and Montenegro to come to an agreement on the economic aspects of the new federal union. Environment Issues: Pollution of coastal waters from sewage outlets, especially in tourist-related areas such as Kotor; air pollution around Belgrade and other industrial cities; water pollution from industrial wastes dumped into the Sava which flows into the Danube. StatisticsClimate: Hot summers (humid in the north, dry in the south)
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