But resentment over Kosovan influence within the Yugoslav federation was harnessed by the future Yugoslav Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic.
Montenegro and Serbia are still tied together in the all-but-defunct Yugoslav federation.
The new prime minister also called in his speech for a reform of the Yugoslav Federation, which comprises Serbia and the independence-minded Montenegro.
Montenegro -- the smaller of the Yugoslav federation's two republics -- has criticized both NATO and Milosevic, and tried to remain neutral in the conflict.
Milosevic told an Israeli newspaper that rebels in Macedonia threatened the unity of what remained of the Yugoslav federation -- the republics of Serbia and Montenegro.
In neighbouring Serbia - Montenegro's partner in the Yugoslav federation - low turnout also invalidated two attempts in the past three months to elect a president.
The main opposition party - which prefers continued ties with Serbia, Montenegro's senior partner in the Yugoslav federation - had urged its supporters to stay away.
Mr Kostunica will lose his job later this year when the Yugoslav Federation is dissolved into a much looser union between Serbia and the other republic, Montenegro.
Milo Djukanovic, the pro-western president of Montenegro, Serbia's rebellious little partner in what is left of the Yugoslav federation, might then be invited to nominate a successor.
Shorn of Montenegro, the Yugoslav federation would no longer exist.
In fact, much now hangs on Montenegro, Serbia's nominal partner in the rump Yugoslav federation, where most people want a loosening of ties with Belgrade and a growing minority favours full independence.
Some day when American diplomacy has a strong sense of direction, we will sit down with the Europeans and hammer out the borders of the successor states to the now-defunct Yugoslav federation.
But the breakup of the artificially created Yugoslav federation has been anything but peaceable, in no small part because of U.S. and European diplomatic mistakes made in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Given the determination of Montenegro's leadership to go its own way - whether formally within or outside the Yugoslav federation - there's little Mr Kostunica or any democratically-inclined politician can do to reverse the process.
Group II: Russian Federation, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
应用推荐