Multilateral negotiations were fruitless, the center was discredited, something had to be done fast, and only the Slavic republics could do it.

The Central Asian and Azerbaijani leaders, for their part, saw little economic perspective for the future, outside union with the Slavic republics.

Can an artificial federation of six diverse Slavic republics even survive?

Underneath was an outline of the three Slavic republics, marked "Field of Miracles."

The Slavic republics, though they share deep historic and cultural roots, are divided over important questions involving the transition to a market economy.

Before that, for roughly a thousand years, it was the independent, Catholic, Slavic, seafaring republic of Ragusa.

But in the Slavic republics, the Communist Party is still the only one recognized.

The two Slavic republics are linked together not only by history, but in the perception of foreign investors.

The predominantly Slavic republics declared that they drew their authority to dissolve the union from the fact that they were its original cofounders.

That concern grew today with news that the parliament in Byelorussia, the third Slavic republic, had approved an independence declaration.