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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stormweaver who wrote (6575)	5/3/1999 6:06:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

ANALYSIS-Montenegro fears pro-Serb boost by NATO 06:46 a.m. May 03, 1999 Eastern By Richard Meares PODGORICA, Yugoslavia, May 3 (Reuters) - Montenegro, wedded to Serbia but refusing to obey it, had seen its own army as the main threat to its stability but is now worried NATO might turn out to be the real danger. The tiny republic's leaders, traitors in Serbia's eyes for refusing to support its conflict with NATO and for condemning the emptying of Kosovo, say civilian deaths from NATO bombs and an oil embargo are bitter rewards for staying out of the war. The pro-Western government in the Yugoslav republic, closely tied by blood and history to Serbia, has only a slim majority. Its hold on power looks more precarious after each death and each blow to its struggling economy. ''The fact people here switched to democracy and supported it in elections should be rewarded at least by sparing us from some bombs,'' Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan told Reuters after a NATO raid killed three children and two adults on Friday. ''The majority of the people are certainly behind us but this could be reversed if we are exposed as targets.'' Montenegro has suffered little from bombing as NATO strives not to provide fuel for supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Friday's attack on a bridge near Kosovo has stunned Montenegrins, who were already appalled at the devastation in Serbia but could still believe it wouldn't happen to them. That comforting thought, now slipping away, had helped muffle opposition to Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, whose defiance has been more of a morale problem to Milosevic than a strategic one. Djukanovic had long accused the Yugoslav Army of planning a ''creeping coup'' by trying to usurp civilian powers. He said with satisfaction that the military, which takes its orders direct from Belgrade, had made little progress. Then, in a bad week, the first civilian was killed in a NATO bombing near the capital Podgorica, Montenegrin pleas to be exempted from a new oil embargo on Yugoslavia fell on apparently deaf ears and the bridge bombing ended in carnage. ''It is our policy not to confront the army here, that would provoke civil war here and we are not going to provoke one. We call on NATO countries to support us in that effort simply be not bombing Montenegro,'' Burzan said. He said Montenegro was willing to accept even armed outside observers to verify it was not sending oil to Serbia if the republic was exempted from the new Yugoslav oil embargo. Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic, worried that public opinion might demand revenge against NATO, told mourners after the funeral on Sunday of a 10-year-old girl killed near the bridge that Milosevic was more to blame than the West for the tragedy. The main opposition Socialist People's Party, close to Milosevic, renewed a call on Monday for Montenegro to obey the federal government, condemn NATO and rein in its free media. The party, which last week walked out of round-table peace talks in parliament, also demanded the army take control of the beefed-up paramilitary police force, which guards key buildings and ministers and patrols the streets of Podgorica. The government says the police would resist this. The navy said on Sunday it was closing Bar on the Adriatic coast, the republic's only major port. A trickle of outside aid for 65,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees in Montenegro comes through Bar but officials here say the West has added to their problems by leaving it to deal largely on its own with the humanitarian burden. The government hopes Friday's deaths will be an exception and the leaders of Montenegro's 630,000 people are already looking ahead to how they can survive the post-war period. Foreign Minister Branko Perovic says Milosevic will wait until then to take his revenge for their perfidy. Independence -- which would be the final death knell for Yugoslavia -- is being mooted as a defence but one for which there does not yet appear to be public support. ''With every day that passes there is less likelihood we can stay in this federation,'' Perovic told Reuters last month. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.