DJUKANOVIC HOPES EU WON'T CONTEST RIGHT TO REFERENDUM

PODGORICA, Feb 14 (Hina) - President Milo Djukanovic said on Wednesday Montenegro would consider the proposals mentioned during his recent meeting with Javier Solana but expected the EU would not contest Montenegro's right to choose its own future. During talks with a group of French and German politicians in Podgorica, Djukanovic said he hoped Montenegro "will not be made a precedent in the treatment of the basic principles on which the EU and the international community rest, including the right of every people to independently decide about its fate and its future." He convened a meeting with the leaders of all parliamentary parties for Thursday to brief them about his talks with Solana, the European Union's high representative for common foreign and defence policy, and the latest proposals from Brussels. The Liberal Alliance announced it would deny confidence in the minority government if the ruling party dropped the idea of holding a referendum on Montenegro's independence. The Social Democrats (SDP), the coalition partner of Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists, said they would become the opposition if the referendum idea was abandoned. According to SDP president Ranko Krivokapic, after two months of EU mediation Serbia and Montenegro are far from an agreement on the arrangement of their future ties. The Union's mediation has turned "into arbitration on Serbia's behalf and to Montenegro's detriment," he asserted. Deputy Prime Minister Zarko Rakcevic said it was difficult to accept to have one policy prosecuted at the UN war crimes tribunal while "genocide and a crime against humanity (are perpetrated) in Brussels against the Montenegrin people and the Montenegrin state." (hina) ha