Eagle signals new start for tiny state

MONTENEGRO - The flags are going up in Montenegro, double-headed eagles that look as if they are from an Austro-Hungarian museum. But this is no historical pageant put on for tourists.

On May 21, the junior partners in the ramshackle successor state to Yugoslavia, the state union of Serbia-Montenegro, are bent on going ahead with an independence referendum that will sever ties with Serbia and plant another new state on the map of Europe.

In Brussels they can barely conceal their horror. Still wrestling with the unlovely prospect of an independent Kosovo, the European Union now faces the prospect of not one but two new, poor and small applicants for membership.

The EU has raised the bar as high as it can manage for the referendum, insisting on a 55 per cent majority in favour of independence before it will recognise the outcome.

But if it thought this unusual device would cow Podgorica into submission it was mistaken.

Fresh from a whirlwind tour of European capitals, Montenegro's ebullient Foreign Minister, Miodrag Vlahovic, says it's time for Brussels to consign the state union to history.

"If there is any vote in favour of independence, one thing is clear - the state union won't exist," he says. "If we have the majority, the state union is over and done with.

"We are not trying to dissolve a state that existed for centuries. It was a provisional arrangement that we entered precisely because there was an exit route."

Vlahovic says Brussels is trying to "compensate" Serbia for the likely loss of Kosovo in final status talks by making Montenegro's exit as tricky as possible. "We are hostages of Serbia," he says. "Everyone in the Balkans is a hostage of Serbia."

But not everyone in Europe has their head in the sand regarding Montenegro's independence. In the sepulchral cafes of Podgorica, the capital of a country with a population of 600,000, European diplomats can be seen scouting out the terrain of a land where they know they will have to set up shop sooner or later.

Some are already busy working out their rights to the old embassy buildings that the major powers maintained in the former royal capital of Cetinje in the days before World War I, when Montenegro was independent.

Serbia snuffed out the old kingdom in 1918, forcing King Nikola into exile in Italy, where he died inconsolate.

In the late 1980s, Yugoslav communists supervised the reburial in Cetinje of the moustachioed old warrior, who had cannily married his striking daughters into the royal houses of Italy, Serbia and Russia.

But the communist attempt to stage manage and defuse history backfired - the emotional ceremony unleashed memories and passions that caught fire in the 1990s.

The pro-independence camp is furious about the way it says Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic dragged them into war with Croatia, particularly into besieging the Croat port city of Dubrovnik in 1991 - although Serbs say it didn't need much prodding.

Many blame the Serbs for all the country's ills. But this line is not shared by everyone, which helps explain why Brussels looks on the forthcoming referendum so gingerly.

Even as Vlahovic outlines his plans for separation, a mighty procession of Serb Orthodox bishops, priests, nuns and laity - some ostentatiously waving Serbian banners - wends its way through the centre of Podgorica - a powerful reminder of the size of the pro-Serbian party in Montenegro.

At the centre of the commotion is the frail, elderly Bishop Amfilohija, a saint in the eyes of the pro-Serbian camp and "Satan" - as one man put it - in the eyes of the rest.

Vlahovic stares through the cafe window with distaste and disbelief as the procession passes by.

The Bishop's supporters are few and far between in the capital, which is the fiefdom of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, but no one doubts the vote will be close elsewhere.

Only 42 per cent of the population is registered as Montenegrin, followed closely by a 30 per cent bloc of ethnic Serbs who dominate parts of the north adjoining Bosnia and Serbia.

That means the vote in May will be decided by the minorities - Albanians, Bosnians and Croats - whose anti-Serb feelings the Government hopes it can bank on.

Austrian diplomat Florin Raunig says he has few fears that the vote will ignite the kind of violence the region saw in the 1990s, though he adds: "The Balkans is always surprising."

He says Europe's insistence on a large majority voting for separation means the vote could be inconclusive - more than 50 per cent, but less than 55 - "a grey zone" as he put it.

"Their problem is that there are only 600,000 of them. If there were six million it would be different."

Meanwhile, the Government acts as if the vote has already take place. The Foreign Minister conducts diplomacy without any reference to Belgrade, Serbian dinars are not legal tender, and on the international border with Albania, flags, banners, emblems and references to the state union came down long ago.

The double-headed eagle, it seems, has come to stay.

- INDEPENDENT