Montenegrin Serb party wants ban on "extremist tourists" from Kosovo
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - July 31, 2006 Monday

Excerpt from report by Montenegrin Mina news agency

Podgorica, 30 July: The Serbian People's Party (SNS) today stated that the dramatic events in Ulcinj yesterday [29 July] had shown the real face of Montenegro after the referendum and asked the government to proclaim the perpetrators of the incident personae non gratae.

Some 2,000 Kosovo Albanians yesterday blocked the Little Beach promenade in protest over the detention of two of their countrymen. [Passage omitted]

"Thousands of extremists dressed as tourists were charging at the police, chanting slogans supporting the terrorist OVK [disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army], and members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs failed to react adequately," said a statement by [the SNS] information service head, Jovan Vucurovic.

The state of Montenegro, he said, showed the strength embodied in "the beat-up policemen who were running around the Little Beach in front of outraged pro-sovereignty protesters from Kosovo-Metohija".

"This incident can be defined as a classic clash with another state's bodies and an expression of various pretensions towards it," Vucurovic believes.

He said that the regime would do everything in its power to cover up this incident, because these Albanian tourists had brought independence to Montenegro and now assessed that they could do whatever they wanted without being held accountable.

"Only naive people can believe that this was a spontaneous gathering of over 2,000 persons, and the SNS openly suspects that this was a well-organized action and that those whom [Kosovo Prime Minister] Agim Ceku and [Democratic Party of Kosovo chairman] Hashim Thaci recently praised for their selfless participation in the dissolution of the country were also among the protesters," Vucurovic said.

The SNS believes that this incident could cause numerous problems in Montenegro, not only because of the increasing Albanian extremism, but also because the regime was not capable of reacting "to a sort of occupation of its territory".

"The question arising is who has allowed such a large number of extremists to enter Montenegro and whether anyone is checking the identity of the persons crossing the border between Montenegro and Serbia from the territory of Kosovo-Metohija," Vucurovic said.

Source: Mina news agency, Podgorica, in Serbian 0916 gmt 30 Jul 06

Copyright 2006 British Broadcasting Corporation
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