Yugoslavia ends in some sadness

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- Officials faced the difficult work of institution-building Wednesday after reshaping the troubled nation of Yugoslavia into a new country with a new name. Residents greeted the change with little enthusiasm.\nSerbia and Montenegro, as the country now is called, is all that is left after a decade of war that broke Yugoslavia into pieces. A European Union-brokered accord approved by parliament on Tuesday leaves the two republics only loosely united, and they could break up for good as early as 2006.\n"Does this mean we'll have to stand in lines for new passports again?" Jelena Misic, a 32-year-old from Belgrade, said Wednesday.\nThe skepticism about the reform is typical for many Serbs and Montenegrins who lived through a decade of bloodshed during the disintegration of the old, six-republic Yugoslav federation created after World War II.\nTuesday's vote erased the name Yugoslavia from the world map, decades after it was founded as The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918. The country's name was changed to Yugoslavia, which means "the country of southern Slavs," in 1929.\nThe new country is a loose union of its two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, linked only by a small joint administration in charge of defense and foreign affairs.