Montenegro recognises Kosovo

By Kole Casule Reuters - Friday, October 10 03:12 am

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Serbia's neighbours Montenegro and Macedonia recognised Kosovo on Thursday in a blow to Belgrade's efforts to counter the secession of its former province.

On Wednesday, the United Nations' General Assembly supported Serbia's initiative to seek an International Court of Justice opinion on the legality of the independence declaration made by Kosovo in February and recognised by 48, mostly Western states.

Serbia had hoped that it would stop the further recognition of its former province.

Montenegro and Macedonia, the only two former Yugoslav republics that ended their union with Serbia peacefully, on Thursday recognised Kosovo and issued a joint statement.

"The decision to recognise Kosovo .... is the result of thorough political assessment," the joint statement issued in Skopje following a government session said.

"We hope it will be understood by Belgrade," Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki told journalists after Macedonian government formally announced the decision.

"We hope that our relations with Serbia will remain friendly," Montenegro's Foreign Minister Milan Rocen said in Podgorica after the government session on Thursday evening.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said that in response to the move, his government will ask Montenegro's ambassador to leave the country. "We consider this to be an adequate response," he told the state news agency Tanjug.

Pro-Serb parties in Montenegro have threatened to protest if the government makes what Jeremic said would be "a knife stabbed in Serbia's back."

"They (Montenegro and Macedonia) are being blackmailed by certain states which threaten to make problems for their European integration," Russia's Ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Konuzin told Reuters.

For months the Macedonian government has been under pressure from its ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up a third of its two million population, to recognise its northern neighbour.

Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999 after NATO bombed the country to stop the killing of civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

Serbia recalled ambassadors from all countries that recognised Kosovo's February 17 declaration of independence, but decided on Thursday to reinstate ambassadors to all those countries including the United States.

The ambassadors were reinstated in the European Union member states in July after a pro-Western government took over.

(Additional reporting by Kole Casule in Skopje, Ljilja Cvekic and Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade, Dusko Mihailovic in Podgorica; editing by Adam Tanner and Dominic Evans)

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