RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY: COMMON GROUND ON LANGUAGE IN THE BALKANS?

In one of the bloodiest conflicts to hit Europe since WWII, the source of the violence in the Balkans was nationalism and its spread throughout the six republics after Josip Tito died in 1980.  In more recent years, the violence of the conflict has ended in most areas (with serious exceptions) and one of the ways the parties to the conflict can communicate and establish common ground is through their eerily similar languages.  Yet nationalisms still remain and are protected.  Therefore, according to Ljudmila Cvetkovic and Goran Vezic ofRFE/RL, the fact that people from the different Balkan states are mutually intelligible is not as much of a common ground point because they insist that they do not have this in common in order to protect their sense of apartness–through nationalism, religion, and language.  Besides logistical problems that result from this conflict, including redundant printing of books in very similar dialects, the discussion of language in the Balkans may entrench divisions between these hostile nations.

Question to the Blogosphere:  Do you think that there are considerable differences between Croatian and Serbian?  Do you think this issue reflects underlying residual tensions from the conflict in the 1990s or is it more benign?