Montenegro caught in NATO-Serbia crossfire

By David Cronin

Date: 09/12/04

MONTENEGRO is being held hostage to Serbia because of the EU-sponsored agreement on uniting the two former Yugoslav states, it was claimed this week.

Milo Djukanovic, prime minister with the Montenegrin government, cited the case being heard at the International Court of Justice on NATO's bombardment of Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia in 1999.

Officially, the Serbia and Montenegro federation is challenging the legality of this use of force, even though the current government in Podgorica has distanced itself from it.

As a result of this case and Serbia's lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, NATO has rejected a bid by both republics to join its Partnership for Peace Programme.

"None of these two reasons has anything to do with Montenegro," said Djukanovic, during a visit to Brussels. "But we share the consequences. This leads us into the position of being a hostage of Serbian policy. We don't want to be that - just as we don't want Serbia to be a hostage of some wrong decisions that Montenegro makes."

The current union between the two states was the product of the 2002 Belgrade accord, brokered by Javier Solana, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs. Because of the agreement, a referendum in Montenegro on independence planned for this year has been postponed until 2006.

Djukanovic said he understood that Solana wished to reserve some time for tensions between the two states to ease and for efforts to settle the Kosovo issue.

While he admitted that frictions had been reduced, he felt that the postponement of decisions on long-term status had hampered economic and political progress.

"To somebody in Brussels, two or three years in the Balkans may not seem like a lot of time. But to people who know how deeply we are lagging behind Europe, every day is precious."

NATO has rejected a bid by Serbia and Montenegro to join its Partnership for Peace Programme because of Serbia's legal challenge at the International Court of Justice on NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the country's lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The Government of Montenegro, which is tied to Serbia in a federation, feels unfairly treated since it distanced itself from the legal challenge.