Milo Đukanović

US Vice-President Joseph Biden told Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic by phone on Monday that Washington supports NATO membership for Montenegro, "provided that Montenegro continues pursuing reforms and boosts popular support" for joining.

The 28-member alliance is due to make a decision on Montenegro's membership in December.

The Democratic Front is planning new protests aimed at forcing out Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic - who has held power since 1991 - on September 27, it said on Monday.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has welcomed Montenegro's commitment to regional security and cooperation and thanked the country for its continued contributions to the Alliance's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurtz on Friday said recent attacks on journalists in the country were "very regrettable and should not happened".

Speaking after a meeting with Montenegrin Foreign Minister Igor Luksic in Podgorica, he said he had came to Montenegro primarily to meet civil society groups and the media and hear what they have to say.

Montenegro's ruling party congress, scheduled for next week, is expected to reaffirm Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's position as leader and tighten party discipline.

Djukanovic, a former communist, has led Montenegro for almost 25 years. He is seeking his seventh mandate as leader of a party that has been in power without interruption since the beginning of the nineties.

NATO should invite Macedonia and Montenegro to join when it holds its next summit in Poland in July of next year, Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak has said.

"It would be excellent news if the invitations could be sent from (the NATO summit in) Warsaw to Macedonia and Montenegro," Reuters quoted Siemoniak as saying at a conference in Wroclaw, Poland on Friday.

NATO chief offers condolences to families of victims

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the loss of all lives during NATO's bombing campaign against the SRJ represented "a tragedy."

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, is coming to Podgorica on Wednesday on a two-day visit to discuss Montenegro's aspirations to become a full member of the Atlantic Alliance by the end of 2015.

Montenegro's annual national report on the weapons trade said the country exported arms worth around 11 million euros over the last year, a rise of 41 per cent in value in comparison to previous years.

The Ministry of Economy report, which BIRN has seen, contains information on each export licence issued, a description of the goods, the number of items involved and the total value.

Montenegrin PM Milo Djukanovic on Friday described "the security picture of Europe" as incomplete without the region's "full integration in NATO."

"Our region's countries can preserve their security only within the Euro-Atlantic community, and we belong to that circle regardless of the stories about neutrality," he told a forum, dubbed "2BS (To Be Secure)", held in Podgorica.