The Pact for Stability of Serbia is slipping off the agenda, the opposition parties are moving apart again, and the Group of 17 'experts' is scaling down their once ambitious plans. It all suits Slobodan Milosevic.
Serbian schoolchildren have a bundle of new books for their libraries - a gift from Serbia's self-styled 'Uncle Education Minister - but the lessons they teach are all about war, hate and patriotic militarism.
The clerks at the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry have nothing to do - their bosses are barred from travelling and almost no-one wants to visit them - which somewhat handicaps their work.
Economic sanctions against Yugoslavia have hit disproportionately against ordinary Serbs. Travel bans, by contrast, are successfully targeting Milosevic's elite.
Montenegro's president is trying to reconcile Serbia's feuding political forces, while at home his fellow citizens make it clear they wish to be as close to Europe as possible - and as far as possible from Serbia.
The Milosevic regime is resorting to increasingly draconian measures to control Serbia's media.
According to the old Serbian proverb, 'an empty rifle does not fire'. It is easily used in connection with the threats of a handful of generals, who want to send the Yugoslav Army back into Kosovo, and soon.
Amid charges of coup attempts and Belgrade's cold shouldering of Podgorica's effort to renegotiate its federative relationship with Serbia, Montenegro slips closer to outright confrontation.
A student movement dubbed 'Resistance' plans to mark the new university year in October by occupying faculties, blocking lectures and pressing for Slobodan Milosevic's ouster - but his regime is certain to fight back, and hard.
The state media is turning Serbs into a nation of paranoids, sending them out to hunt fifth columnists in every corner - and targeting ordinary people for the slightest of reasons.
