The only NATO member country that actually borders Yugoslavia is Hungary, which is also the organization's newest member. The combination of proximity and uncertainty about the requirements of membership have some Hungarians very worried indeed. PNS correspondent Thomas Goltz has been traveling through eastern Europe covering the effects of the NATA action. He is the author of "Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-rich, War-torn, Post-Soviet Republic" (M.E. Sharpe, 1998).

BUDAPEST-- While they delight in their new NATO membership as a symbol of "finally" belonging to the West, many Hungarians seem almost surprised that the alliance has turned out to be military, and not a social or economic club.

"Being Hungarian means speaking the language and appreciating the food" said Anita, a young translator of Dutch, English and German. "The youth have no concept of the ethnic craziness that motivates our neighbors."

"As a society, I think we have been taken by surprise that we might actually be involved in a war" said philosophy professor Misu Vajda, "and not against our old enemy to the East, but with our old neighbor, Yugoslavia."

Indeed, Hungary has traditionally seen the main threat to its existence coming from the Orthodox, Slavic states to the North and East (mainly Russia), and not from its former colony to the South.

"We have always sort of looked down our noses at the Balkans, and were secretly pleased when we were forced by history to disengage from the clannish, chaotic culture of the region and focus on our own," said Prof. Vajda. "Now we may be looking at a return to the past. I have no love of Slobodan Milosevic nor his rabid Serbian nationalism -- but I cannot see how bombing bridges over the Danube will stop either."

It is stopping Hungary's phenomenal growth. Although the country is not anywhere near economic collapse, having a war 10 miles over the frontier has doubtlessly given potential investors pause -- and drastically increased the price of importing or exporting goods along the traditional artery of commerce, the Danube.

But beyond questions of trade and investment, the real issue is what Hungary will be asked to contribute as part of its commitment to NATO membership.

General Ferenc Vegh, head of Hungary's new NATO-connected forces, prefers to duck the question about NATO air craft using his country.

"We do not give direct support, only indirect support," says Vegh, a former Warsaw Pact tank commander who now professes total loyalty to his old enemy.

Hungary, which officially joined NATO March 15 -- three days before the air campaign began -- along with the Czech Republic and Poland, is the only NATO member with a contiguous border with Yugoslavia. Logically, it cannot remain a member if it shirks its commitments.

The problem for Budapest is the area of northern Yugoslavia known as Vojvodina which was ceded to Belgrade in the aftermath of World War I when the Hungarian portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was chopped into pieces.

"We lost two thirds of our territory but with it, all our minorities," said Agnes Heller, a leading philosopher who also lectures at the New School in New York. "But in losing minorities that might have created problems as in Yugoslavia, we also lost many Hungarians to other countries such as Romania and Serbia."

In Vojvodina, ethnic Hungarians were still half the population at the end of WWII, when the area was granted the same autonomous status in Tito's Yugoslavia as Kosovo held within Serbia. By the time Vojvodina was stripped of that status in 1988, the Hungarians officially counted for less than 17% -- although they still number some 350,000 souls for whom Budapest feels responsible.

Hungarians fear that any active participation in the war might result in ethnic cleansing in Vojvodina, said one western observer.

Many of those ethnic Hungarians from Yugoslavia who now live and work in the ethnic homeland to the North of Vojvodina go much further than that.

"The idea of a Hungarian soldier associated with NATO ground forces fighting against Hungarian conscripts in the Yugoslav army is my worst nightmare," said Zsofia Szerda, a young lawyer. "One part of me says I must return home to be with my family and friends at this critical time, and another says that once out I should stay out," she says.

Szerda is also not returning "home" to Yugoslavia because there is "no future" for Hungarians there. She describes her late father's experience -- a Chief Prosecutor in Vojvodina when it enjoyed autonomous status within Serbia, he automatically lost his job when the region was merged with the "republican" bureaucracy of Serbia in 1988.

The eradication of jobs in local government and the reduction in Hungarian language education became a rallying point for groups agitating for re-constituting the region's autonomous status. There were even whispers of attempts to move toward independence and reunion with Hungary. All such notions have now been pulled back into a silence born of fear.

"In the current political atmosphere, supporting autonomy is the most dangerous possible thing to do," says Szerda. "But the possibility of using Hungarian territory to launch NATO attacks on Yugoslavia has brought it all back up to the surface, and people are beyond scared -- they are terrified."

Already, some 2,000 Vojvodinites have chosen to leave Yugoslavia for Hungary. The unspoken fear is that this trickle might turn into a flood should NATO push come to ethnic shove in Serbia's North.