Montenegro Serbs Tell Serbia's PM Their Woes

Representatives of the large Serbian community in Montenegro will meet Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Monday in Belgrade to seek his support about what they call their "intolerable situation" in Montenegro.

The meeting will be attended by the leader of the NOVA party, Andrija Mandic, the head of the Democratic People's Party, Milan Knezevic, the president of the Serbian National Council, Momcilo Vuksanovic, the head of the cultural organization Matica Srpska, Vladimir Bozovic and Budimir Aleksic, from the Institute for Serbian Culture.

They said they wanted to meet Vucic because a campaign was being conducted against them in the media in Serbia and in the Montenegrin branches of the Belgrade-based newspaper Informer and the broadcaster TV Pink.

In a letter sent to Prime Minister Vucic ahead of the visit, they complained of particular pressure on them to abandon "three key political issues that are part of the vital national interest of the Serbs in Montenegro - withdrawal of recognition of Kosovo, lifting sanctions against Russia and opposition to NATO membership".

The meeting came the Serb leaders over the weekend visited Moscow and met with several Russian top officials.

Sergei Glazev, advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, used the meeting to criticise the pro-Western government of Montenegro, alluding to the "sacrifice" that Serbs in the country were being asked to make and suggesting Montenegro had abandoned its traditional values.

"I want to pay tribute to you who endure great sacrifices for love of your country, defending the traditional values for which Montenegro was once well known. The Montenegrin government has decided that our relations should not be as they were in the past," Glazev...