"It’s June 25, 1991 and I am waiting for my luggage at the airport in Ljubljana, the capital of the Slovenia Socialist Republic, one of the six republics that make up the country of Yugoslavia, where I was born," writes AFP's Belgrade-based correspondent Jovan Matic.

"I am a journalist working for Radio Yugoslavia and a small Parisian radio station and am surrounded by fellow passengers who just flew in from Belgrade, the federal capital."

"It is two years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and for several years now nationalism has been on the rise in my country along ethnic lines, fueled by economic hardship. The regional government in Slovenia has just surprised Belgrade by announcing its split from Yugoslavia, a day earlier than planned."