Interesting read...
Original source: http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2388273,00.html
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Serbs want to import brides
04/09/2008 21:42 - (SA)

Boris Babic

Belgrde - A proposal to bring 100 000 south-east Asian brides to
Serbia for bachelors, particularly those living in backward rural
areas, has caused outrage, surprise and laughter.

Labour and Welfare Minister Rasim Ljajic had to apologise to the
public after the state secretary in his ministry, Zeljko Vasiljevic,
said Serbia would benefit by bringing in women from "Laos, Burma,
Cambodia and Vietnam."

The number of Serbs is dwindling by 30&nsp;000 each year, the women
disinterested in bearing children and men interested in emigrating
westward instead of farming so something "must urgently be done,"
Vasiljevic said.

"There (in Asia) they already live on $2 a day. Here it's economic
heaven for them," Vasiljevic said. "They're Buddhists and that's a
peaceful faith similar to (Serbian) Orthodoxy, they're traditionally
loyal to the state they live in and are hard-working."

Negative birth rate

With a view to the "250 000 bachelors in Serbia," home to 7.5 million
people, the former war veteran particularly stressed that "those women
nurture the cult of children and we could in five years have 300 000
newborns."

While Serbia had about 135 000 women more than men in the 15-60 age
group in the 2002 census, the problem of a negative birth rate remains
a thorn in the side particularly of nationalists.

After all, in Kosovo, the Serbian heartland province which declared
independence in February, the majority Albanians reproduce at the
highest rate in Europe.

Unlike "spoiled Serbian boys don't seek out regular girls, but gawk at
silicone dolls for parties and showing off," as a columnist said in
Thursday's edition of the daily Politika, the Albanians have no
problems with emptying villages.

In Serbia, "when boys turn 40, they suddenly remember children and
start looking for girls - machines for cooking and bearing kids," said
the columnist, sociologist Slobodan Antonic.

Antonic says the Vasiljevic project, "briefed on 15 and elaborated on
120 pages," stirred a vigorous debate on Serbian internet forums,
where boys support Vasiljevic's plan as something to teach arrogant
Serbian girls a lesson.

In return, women complain of "infantile boys," disinterested in
marriage and children, so maybe with Asian girls we can import Cuban
boys and teach everybody some sense," Antonic said.

Vasiljevic, meanwhile, though obviously disappointed, said his project
was not a ministry effort but his own, adding he was shelving it
"until a better time." Ljajic said he was helpless to discipline his
subordinate owing to the complex ruling coalition deal.

His idea, however, reflects a real problem worrying not just Serbs but
others in the region too.