The Yugoslav federation will cease to exist later this year, when Serbia and the neighboring republic of Montenegro form a looser union with a new name.

The republics have refused to pay taxes to the federal government, moved closer to legal secession and formed their own militias.

Russia and neighboring republics are forming strategies for developing their oil.

The leaders further proposed that the republics form an economic union to maintain a "common economic space" and to insure the functioning of the national economy.

Last weekend, these former republics formed a Commonwealth of Independent States.

To fight the War of 1812, the republic formed a small regular military and trained it to protect the frontiers and coastlines.

He proposed that the four Soviet republics with strategic nuclear weapons form a "collective management" to control and eventually destroy them.

Then the Soviet Union was disbanded altogether, and 11 now-sovereign republics formed a loose Commonwealth of Independent States.

The two republics have formed a newer, smaller Yugoslavia since the splintering of the six-republic Yugoslav federation.

The two republics initially formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992.