By Kurt Wachter Co-ordinator of Fare, a network of organisations from 13 European countries dedicated to combating racism and xenophobia in football (based in Austria)

How big a problem is racism in Yugoslav football?
The situation is very complex in Yugoslavia, and that makes it very difficult to address.

Politics and football became inter-related, particularly during the Civil War.

The Yugoslav warlord Arkan, who was once the head of Red Star Belgrade's supporters club, recruited some of the club's most violent hooligans from the fan group Delije ("Tigers").

So it is not a superficial kind of racism but a more organised and deep-rooted problem.

How does the problem manifest itself?
There is a hardcore group of fans of Partisan Belgrade and Red Star who are openly racist during European games.

But it seems that whenever a Yugoslavian team plays an English team, there is a problem with racist chanting.

Only this season, Ipswich players were taunted when they played FC Sartid in the Uefa Cup.

Which clubs are the worst offenders?
The obvious example is Red Star Belgrade, but that does not mean that the problem is not widespread throughout the country.

Two years ago, Leicester played Red Star in Vienna and Ade Akinbiyi and Andrew Impey were subjected to racist chants.

I witnessed a game in Vienna last year when Partisan Belgrade played Rapid in the Uefa Cup and Rapid's Dutch forward Gaston Taument was heavily abused throughout the match.

Is the problem getting any better?
Awareness is still a problem.

With the bigger clubs like Red Star and Partisan, we are still in the very early stages of co-operation.

Fare recently held an Action Week and as part of that there were anti-racism activities in Belgrade - they were the first in Yugoslav football and it is only a start.

But we are now getting the feeling that Yugoslavs are starting to have a more European outlook and they are beginning to address the problem.

What are the authorities doing to improve the situation?
We informed the Yugoslav Football Association about Fare's activites during the Action Week but unfortunately we did not get a response.

Smaller clubs, like OFK Belgrade, seem to have a very positive approach but the bigger clubs have been less co-operative so I cannot say that there is a growing campaign or even a real awareness of the problem.

Some clubs believe that they could alienate their traditional fan base if they put anti-racism messages over the public address system or in match programmes.

What we would say is that in fact it has quite the opposite effect - that they will attract more fans by making football more attractive and accessible to people.