The heir to the long vacated throne of what used to be Yugoslavia visited Pittsburgh this week to tout business opportunities in his country and to raise money for hospitals there.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette
	Crown Prince Alexander II visits the American Serbian Club on the South Side yesterday.

Crown Prince Alexander II and his wife, Princess Katherine, were enthusiastically received yesterday morning at the American Serbian Club on the South Side and the night before at a reception sponsored by U.S. Steel.

The purpose of the royal visit was to raise money for Lifeline, a charity Katherine established in 1993 primarily to provide assistance to refugees from the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.

At the Duquesne Club reception Wednesday night, more than $150,000 was pledged to provide modern equipment for the hospital in Smederevo, where U.S. Steel recently bought a plant. Almost all of the hospital equipment in Serbia dates from the 1970s and only a third of it works, Alexander said.

Alexander, 59, was born in London where his father, King Peter II, had taken refuge after the Nazis invaded his country in April 1941.

The royal family's exile continued after World War II, when the communists under Marshal Josip Broz Tito took over. Alexander was educated in Britain, Switzerland and the United States, and served as an officer in the British army.

Alexander and Katherine moved to Belgrade in October 2000, after Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic was toppled. Serbia and Montenegro are all that remain of the Yugoslavia his father once ruled, which then included Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia, and Montenegro is planning a referendum on independence.

Economically, Serbia has suffered severely from the wars and from being the last nation in Eastern Europe to be liberated from communism, Alexander said. Living standards are only a third of what they were 15 years ago, and unemployment is near 40 percent.

"We are recovering from a particularly difficult past, including a decade of total madness," he said.

About 3 million Serbs, from a total of 9 million, fled the country during the war-torn 1990s, mostly for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. The exodus included about 300,000 doctors, engineers and other professional people.

"We lost a lot of the cream," the prince said.

Great progress is being made in liberalizing the political system and reforming the tax system, he added, but the transition could be accelerated with more foreign investment, like that U.S. Steel made when it bought the Serbian steel maker Sartid in September 2003. The United States is the principal foreign investor in Serbia, Alexander said.

Serbs don't resent Americans for NATO's bombing of Serbia during the 1999 conflict over Kosovo, the prince said.

"Every American is warmly welcomed. Many Americans have visited Belgrade and left a little heavier [thanks to good Serbian food and warm Serb hospitality]," he said.

Kosovo is a province of Serbia where the vast majority of people are ethnic Albanian Muslims. NATO intervened to prevent ethnic cleansing by the Milosevic regime. Though technically still part of Serbia, Kosovo is ruled by a U.N. mandate.

Serbia wants to join the European Union. But before that can happen, it must turn over to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands those Serbs accused with Milosevic of war crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Alexander said political disarray more than unwillingness is responsible for Serbia's failure so far to comply with the arrest warrants. (A dozen parties are represented in the 126-member parliament; the largest has only 30 seats.)

Alexander supported the opposition movement that brought down Milosevic, but swore off politics afterward.

Politics could be in his future, though, suggested Rebecca Ranich, of Aliquippa, who escorted the prince and princess during their visit to Pittsburgh.

"In the public opinion polls [in Serbia], only 12 percent approve of the government, but 83 percent approve of him," she said.