Serbia and Montenegro

F

International Organizations

Serbia and Montenegro was a member of the United Nations (UN), having been re-admitted as the FRY in November 2000 after an absence of eight years, when its claim to the seat occupied by the former Yugoslavia had not been recognized.

VI

History

This section covers the events in Serbia and Montenegro from just before the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to June 2006. For details on the earlier history of Yugoslavia, see Yugoslavia.

A

Events after Communism

From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1990, Yugoslavia was a Communist nation, having broken its links with the Soviet bloc in the 1950s and become a leading member of the non-aligned nations. In January 1990 the League of Communists of Yugoslavia agreed to surrender its monopoly on political power. Nationalist and conservative groups received strong support in elections in the spring of 1990, Yugoslavia’s first free multi-party balloting since World War II. In December 1990, the outspoken nationalist Slobodan Milošević was elected as Serbia’s president. Milošević was to play a large role in the wars which ensued in the Balkans. He began by placing the province of Kosovo, which had fought for its independence during much of the 1980s, under martial rule, suspending its separate legislature and severely restricting the province’s privileges and rights; in the same year, the other autonomous province of Serbia, Vojvodina, also lost its separate legislature. In May 1991 a constitutional crisis arose when Serbia and its allies blocked the installation of a Croat to head Yugoslavia’s collectively rotating presidency. After the parliaments of Croatia and Slovenia passed declarations of independence on June 25, the federal government ordered the Serb-dominated army to suppress the secessionists. A ten-day war was fought in Slovenia, but ended with the defeat of the federal army. The war in Croatia, which pitted federal troops and spontaneously formed militias of ethnic Serbs against Croatian forces, lasted seven months. It ended in January 1992 with a ceasefire; Croatia lost control of more than one third of its territory, and famous ancient cities such as Dubrovnik were damaged.

The republic of Macedonia seceded peacefully in November 1991. In March 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina also declared its independence from Yugoslavia, although ethnic Serbs in the republic had earlier boycotted the referendum on independence. One month later—only three months after the ceasefire in Croatia—war broke out in Bosnia (see Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War). Croats, Muslims, and Serbs living in Bosnia all took different sides, with Croats and Muslims sometimes fighting together. On April 27, 1992, Serbia and Montenegro, the remaining republics, agreed to unite and declared themselves the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This move tacitly acknowledged the independence of the four breakaway republics, even while Serbia continued to support the Serb forces in Bosnia.

A

1

The Federal Republic

Although the UN in September, refused to allow the FRY automatically to take up the General Assembly seat of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the self-proclaimed federation was given the option of reapplying for membership in its own right. However, a move in October by then federal prime minister Milan Panić to follow up on this option led to a political crisis in the federation and to his ultimate political downfall.

In May 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognized by the UN as an independent nation; war, however, raged on, and Bosnian Serbs began creating Serbian Autonomous Regions (SARs) throughout the republic. By 1993 Serbs controlled almost two thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croats had claimed nearly 20 per cent of the territory, and more than 3 million people were left homeless as a result of the fighting.

The economy and people’s living standards in the FRY deteriorated as a result of UN trade and financial sanctions and the war in Bosnia. The European Community (now the EU) had directed the trade embargo at Serbia and Montenegro in May 1992 in an attempt to halt the war. Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who had been criticized by the international community for his government’s role in perpetuating the war, began pressuring Bosnian Serb leaders to accept UN and EC peace plans in an attempt to get the UN to lift the sanctions and provide some relief for the federation. But the war continued unabated. Milošević was re-elected in December 1992.

After re-election, the Serbian leader countered challenges to his authority, ousting both Panić and the Federal President Dobrica Ćosić. Threatened with a possible no-confidence vote in October, Milošević dissolved parliament and called for December elections. Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) subsequently gained seats in the election, consolidating his hold on power. In January 1994 Serbia and Montenegro signed a pact with Croatia to improve economic relations between the two countries, but the accord stopped short of officially recognizing Croatia’s independence and territorial borders. By this point it was estimated that more than 750,000 people in Serbia and Montenegro had lost their jobs since the UN sanctions were imposed. Sporadic fighting continued in Bosnia throughout 1994, as Bosnian Serb leaders continued to work towards annexing Serb-controlled territories to a “Greater Serbia”. In an effort to cut down on the flow of arms moving from the FRY into Bosnia, the UN scaled back the economic sanctions on the federation in October, subject to periodic review. The move came in part because of problems in enforcing the sanctions, and was made under the condition that the FRY cut off its aid to the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, which it officially did in September 1994. In March 1995 the Russian government, which was a large supplier of arms, oil, and other supplies to the FRY, signed a military cooperation agreement with the federation, seen as formalizing in many ways its past support, even though the agreement was not supposed to become effective until the end of the sanctions. Greece and Albania also retained informal links with the FRY; much of the sanctions-breaking oil shipped into the federation after 1992 was thought to have been routed through Albania.

The successful seizure by Bosnian Serbs of UN-monitored “safe havens” for Bosnian Muslims in early July 1995, and the subsequent involvement of forces from Croatia in Bosnia, led to fears of renewed war between Croatia and Serbia. Serbia’s initial reaction, however, was to rebuff appeals from the Bosnian Serb leadership for military support. Milošević took part in the November 1995 negotiations at Dayton, Ohio, which ended the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War, leading to the ending of sanctions against the FRY.

B

Peace and Internal Strife

Despite opposition from militants within his own party, Milošević was able to impose the peace terms on the FRY, and he retained power in the face of demonstrations on economic issues in April and May 1996. Albanians in the province of Kosovo boycotted the November 1996 federal parliamentary elections. Court and electoral commission decisions nullifying the results of the simultaneous municipal elections, which had given victory to the moderate opposition coalition Zajedno, led to mass demonstrations in the FYR from November 1996 until February 1997, when Milošević announced that he would respect the results. By May 1997, however, Zajedno had virtually disintegrated, and Milošević was able to transfer his power base from the Serbian presidency to the federal presidency in June, after the expiry of his constitutional maximum of two presidential terms in Serbia.

The September 1997 legislative elections gave power to SPS-dominated Joint List coalition, but his ally Milan Milutinovic was returned as Serbian President only after the simultaneous presidential poll was rerun in December. The poll for the Montenegrin presidency in October 1997 gave victory to the anti-Milošević politician Milo Djukanović. In March 1998 the international community began threatening sanctions against the FRY over the use of heavy military force against Albanian separatists in Kosovo.