Serbia and Montenegro began on Wednesday the difficult task of dismantling their union, with opposition parties yet to accept referendum results showing Montenegrins had voted for independence.
Seeking a speedy split, Serbia-Montenegro President Svetozar Marovic, a Montenegrin, has already announced plans to resign on Thursday, at possibly the last meeting of the Council of Ministers, the dying federation’s executive body.
Pro-Serbian unionists in the tiny Balkan state and the Serbian government have yet fully to accept preliminary final results showing 55,5% of Montenegrins backed secession, despite calls from the international community for them to do so.
Since the results were announced on Tuesday, the European Union and United States have both urged Serbia and Montenegro to work together to ensure an orderly split.
”I now expect Belgrade and Podgorica to engage in direct talks on the practical implementation of the results … The European perspective is open to Montenegro,” said Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn.
”What we look for now is both Serbia and Montenegro to now work through all the very complicated questions that will accompany this decision,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said overnight.
A narrow majority of 55,5% of Montenegrins in the historic Sunday poll had backed breaking with Serbia, edging over an EU-agreed threshold of 55%, according to results announced by electoral authorities.
The results were based on a turnout of 86,5% of the 485 000 eligible voters in the state wedged between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea, with a population of just 650 000 people.
Serbian President Boris Tadic on Tuesday accepted the outcome, but moderate nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica — who openly opposed Montenegro’s independence — was cagier, insisting all hurdles must be cleared for its full approval.
However, the start of the talks on dismantling the last shred of former communist Yugoslavia could be delayed due to stalling by the pro-Serbian group of parties.
A day after Sunday’s referendum, Montenegro’s pro-union bloc, led by the Belgrade-backed Socialist People’s Party, demanded a recount of votes, disputing some 19 000 votes in the capital Podgorica.
The outcome will not be deemed to be final until Saturday after expiry of the period during which ballots can be challenged.
Among the major details that need to be resolved are the transfer of the offices of the foreign, defence, human rights and foreign economic relations ministers to Serbia and Montenegro from the federal level.
Other important issues are dividing the command of the military, resolving the ownership of diplomatic missions and domestic property and establishing economic relations.
The federal Parliament has already said initial consultations could start as early as next week on the rights and obligations of the two republics in the divorce.
”I hope that we will resolve our new relations in a tolerant manner and the questions resulting from our new relations in the interests of the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro,” the head of the Council of Finance, Verica Kolanovic, was quoted as saying by Tanjug news agency.
Serbia’s central bank has indicated that this work would only relate to the period since November 1999, when Montenegro gave up the dinar as its currency, as other obligations such as foreign debt had already been defined.
Sunday’s vote consigned to history the last vestiges of the former Yugoslavia, as Montenegro and Serbia were the only two republics from that communist federation to have remained in a union after Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia split away in the 1990s.
The two republics have shared the same language, religion and cultural and historic heritage for centuries. — AFP
