WORLD : Yugoslav Legislature Dissolved

Authorities in Serbia, Yugoslavia’s largest republic, today dissolved the local legislature and government in its troubled southern province of Kosovo, the state news agency Tanjug reported.

The move by the republic of Serbia is likely to cause more unrest by the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo, the nation’s least-developed region.

The decision by all three chambers of the Serbian Parliament came in the wake of Monday’s declaration by 114 ethnic Albanian deputies in Kosovo’s provincial Assembly to secede from Serbia, Belgrade television said.

The document proclaimed Kosovo equal in status to Yugoslavia’s republics and declared that ethnic Albanians, the third-largest ethnic group in the country, would no longer be considered a minority.

Yugoslavia is a loose federation of six republics and two nominally autonomous provinces. Kosovo, a province of 1.9 million, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanian, has progressively lost control of its affairs to Serbia.