I.

Introduction

Serbia and Montenegro, former union of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, located in southeastern Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. Belgrade, located in Serbia, served as the federal capital of unified Serbia and Montenegro.

From 1945 to 1991 Serbia and Montenegro were part of Yugoslavia, a Communist federal state consisting of six republics. Yugoslavia was officially known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) beginning in 1963. In 1990 the Communist Party collapsed, and new non-Communist parties formed. Multiparty elections that year ended 45 years of one-party rule but also brought nationalist political parties into power in all six republics, contributing to ethnic tension in the SFRY. Four of the republics—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia—declared their independence in 1991 and 1992, leaving only Serbia and Montenegro unified. The breakup of the SFRY led to a series of armed conflicts known as the wars of Yugoslav succession.

In April 1992 Serbia and Montenegro acknowledged the breakaway of the four republics by proclaiming themselves the successor state to the SFRY, taking the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). In early 1996 the FRY was recognized as a country by the member nations of the European Union (EU). Many other countries, including the United States, did not recognize the FRY until 2000. Although the United Nations (UN) did not recognize the FRY as the successor state to the SFRY, in 2000 the UN admitted the FRY as a new member.

The FRY’s total land area was 88,361 sq km (34,116 sq mi), less than half the size of the former Yugoslavia. Serbia accounted for 86 percent of the total land area.

At the 1991 census the population of Serbia and Montenegro, then republics of the larger Yugoslavia, was 10,394,026. As a result of the wars of Yugoslav succession in the 1990s, about 646,000 refugees fled to Serbia and Montenegro from Croatia and Bosnia. Serbia’s population was about 15 times greater than that of Montenegro. Serbs comprised the largest ethnic group. Other groups included ethnic Albanians, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), and people of mixed ethnicity.

During the late 1990s, tensions escalated between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the Serbian province of Kosovo, and FRY president Slobodan Milošević used police and military forces to suppress ethnic Albanian separatism in the province. In March 1999 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted an air war against the FRY after Milošević refused to accept an international peace plan for Kosovo. After a peace agreement was reached in June, Kosovo came under UN administration.

In February 2003 the leaders of Serbia and Montenegro endorsed a new constitutional charter that gave more autonomy to the constituent republics and changed the country’s name from the FRY to Serbia and Montenegro. The charter permitted each republic to hold a referendum on full independence after three years. In May 2006 Montenegrins voted in favor of independence. The following month Serbia and Montenegro formally became separate states.

II.

Government Structure

A.

Overview

Serbia and Montenegro established the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) on April 27, 1992, under a new constitution. The constitution provided for a democratic form of government, with a president and a Federal Assembly. Officially, the two constituent republics each had a great deal of autonomy, with their own presidents and assemblies. However, before October 2000 the constitutional structure of the federation’s government bore little relation to the way the country was actually governed. The formal institutions of government served primarily as tools for the personal rule of Slobodan Milošević, the federation president from 1997 to 2000. Prior to becoming FRY president, Milošević was president of Serbia, and that republic’s government had more power in the FRY than the federal government. Opponents of Milošević came to power in Montenegro in 1997, and after that time Montenegro took little part in the institutions and activities of the FRY.

After Milošević’s political downfall in 2000, a democratic government was established in the FRY following federal elections in September 2000 and also in the republic of Serbia after elections there in January 2001. Over the next two years, representatives of the governments of Serbia, Montenegro, and the FRY drafted a constitutional charter for Serbia and Montenegro as the basis for a new union between the two republics. This charter was adopted by the legislatures of each republic in January 2003, and it was adopted and proclaimed by the FRY parliament on February 4, 2003. At that time the FRY ceased to exist and was succeeded by a new state called simply Serbia and Montenegro. The constitutional charter provided for a shared central government with a narrow range of competence and very few powers. Almost all government authority rested with the constituent republics.

The charter permitted the republics to hold separate referendums on full independence after a period of three years. In May 2006 the people of Montenegro voted in favor of independence, and the two republics formally became separate countries the following month. The remainder of this section details the government of Serbia and Montenegro as it stood under the 2003 charter, prior to the split in June 2006.

B.

Executive

The president of Serbia and Montenegro was both the chief of state and the head of government. The president chaired the council of ministers, which performed the executive duties of the union. There was no prime minister at the federal level, as this position was eliminated under the 2003 charter. The president was nominated by the speaker and deputy speaker of parliament and then confirmed by parliamentary vote. The president formally represented Serbia and Montenegro at home and abroad, promulgated the laws passed by the parliament, and was a member of the Supreme Defense Council, which oversaw state defense. The president could also call new elections for the parliament. The president could not be from the same republic as the speaker of the parliament, and the presidency was required to alternate between the two constituent republics. Thus, a president could not continue in office for more than a single four-year term.

Members of the council of ministers were chosen by the president and approved by the parliament. The council of ministers included the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of defense, the minister for international economic cooperation, and the minister for human and minority rights.

C.

Legislature

The parliament of Serbia and Montenegro had a single chamber with 126 members, 91 from Serbia and 35 from Montenegro. The constitutional charter of 2003 provided that until 2005 the members were to be elected from among the members of the national assemblies of Serbia and of Montenegro, by those assemblies. After this time, members of the parliament were to be popularly elected for terms of four years. The powers of the parliament were quite limited, and virtually all decisions required a high degree of consensus. Most legislative authority remained with each of the member republics. All citizens aged 18 or older could vote.

D.

Judiciary and Local Government

The Court of Serbia and Montenegro was the highest court of the central government. It had an equal number of judges from each member republic, who were appointed by the parliament after nomination by the council of ministers. Judges appointed to this court served a single term of six years. The court determined whether laws and regulations violated the constitution. It also settled disputes between institutions of the central government, between the central government and one or both member republics, and between the member republics. In addition, the Court of Serbia and Montenegro could rule on petitions brought by citizens who asserted that their rights under the constitutional charter had been violated.

Each of the member republics also had its own complete governmental system, with legislative, judicial, and executive branches. On the local level Serbia was divided into 29 regions. Montenegro had 21 municipalities.

E.

Political Parties

Political parties in Serbia and Montenegro were generally unstable organizations. Parties tended to form around individual leaders, and they gained or lost in members and influence as these leaders succeeded or failed. Politicians also had a tendency to break away from parties to form new ones as vehicles for advancing their personal political ambitions. Thus, the organizational strength of political parties was less important than the popularity of individual politicians who led the parties.

During the period of Communist rule (1945-1990), only the Communist Party functioned in Yugoslavia. In 1990 Milošević transformed the Communist Party of Serbia into the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). The SPS dominated elections in the FRY until September 2000, when Milošević lost the election for the presidency to Vojislav Koštunica. Koštunica was then head of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a coalition of small parties that had united to defeat Milošević.

After Milošević’s defeat, the SPS lost much of its membership and influence. Several parties within the DOS coalition, notably the Democratic Party (DS in Serbian initials) and Koštunica’s own party, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), gained members and influence.

F.

Social Services

In theory citizens of Serbia and Montenegro were entitled to a wide range of social services, including medical care and retirement benefits. In practice, however, the effects of international economic sanctions through much of the 1990s and the gross mismanagement of the economy by the Milošević regime left much of the population impoverished. State-supported medical services were not adequately financed, while pensions, tiny at best, were paid months late, if at all.

G.

Defense

The country’s military was the Army of Serbia and Montenegro, which was composed almost entirely of ethnic Serbs. The military had a relatively small core of professional and noncommissioned officers and depended on conscription (mandatory for all males) and reserves for manpower. The commander in chief of the armed forces was the Supreme Defense Council, which included the president of Serbia and Montenegro and the presidents of both member republics. The council made decisions by consensus. Public order in Serbia and Montenegro was also maintained by police, most of whom were in the service of the separate member republics.

H.

International Organizations

After the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the FRY proclaimed itself the legal successor of that state. But international organizations rejected this claim, and beginning in 1992 Yugoslav membership in all major international organizations was suspended or canceled. In 1992 the United Nations (UN) refused to allow the FRY to assume the former country’s seat in the UN General Assembly and directed the FRY to submit a new request for membership. After the ouster of Milošević in 2000, the FRY applied for membership in the UN and was admitted as a new member. Subsequently, Serbia and Montenegro was admitted to many international organizations, including the Council of Europe.

III.

History

This section covers events in Serbia and Montenegro from just before the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 to the split of Serbia and Montenegro in June 2006. For the individual histories of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro and the former country of Yugoslavia, see Serbia; Montenegro; and Yugoslavia.

A.

Breakup of Yugoslavia

From the end of World War II (1939-1945) until 1990, Yugoslavia was a Communist-ruled federal state—in its later years almost a confederation—of six republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia) and two autonomous provinces within Serbia (Kosovo and Vojvodina). By 1990 federal institutions, which had proved incapable of coping with ten years of deepening economic crisis, were almost entirely paralyzed by disputes among the republics and a rising tide of divisive ethnic conflicts and separatist movements. Popular support for the regime and the unified state was rapidly declining.

The disintegration in January 1990 of the central ruling party, called the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, paved the way for multiparty elections in all six republics later that year. These elections were won by nationalist parties that were also non-Communist in all of the republics except Serbia and Montenegro, whose December elections were the last in the series. Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, a staunch advocate of Serb nationalist causes, was reelected. His party, renamed the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS; called the League of Communists of Serbia until 1990), won 194 of the 250 seats in Serbia’s National Assembly. The League of Communists of Montenegro, a satellite of Milošević’s Serbian party since 1988, won a similar majority in Montenegro. International observers claimed that the elections in Serbia and Montenegro were unfair, citing in particular Milošević’s total control and manipulation of mass media during the campaign.

Milošević had already incited conflicts with other republics and achieved what he called “the reunification of Serbia” by ending the autonomous status (first granted in 1946) of Kosovo and Vojvodina in 1989. Non-Serbs responded with growing demands for greater autonomy or separation from what they believed was becoming a Serb-dominated (and again Communist) Yugoslavia. In Kosovo, the Albanian majority, comprising 90 percent of the population, engaged in passive resistance to increasing repression and boycotted Serbian elections in 1990 and afterwards.

Negotiations among the new leaders of the republics failed to produce a formula to preserve the unity of Yugoslavia. Between June 1991 and March 1992, four of the republics seceded. In two cases, declarations of independence were followed by ethnic wars in which the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army supported the Serbs in the republics. Both Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on June 25, 1991. In Slovenia, the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army made a failed, ten-day attempt to thwart the republic’s secession. In Croatia a six-month civil war ensued between ethnic Serbs and Croats that left more than 30 percent of Croatia under Serb control. Macedonia seceded in November 1991, becoming the only republic to achieve independence without violence. Bosnia and Herzegovina (often referred to simply as Bosnia) declared independence in March 1992. War broke out in Bosnia between Bosnian Serbs (armed and supported by Serbia) and Bosnian Croats (with similar backing from Croatia), who fought each other and the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks). The fighting continued until late 1995. By 1993 Bosnian Serbs controlled about 70 percent of Bosnia and Croats controlled about 20 percent (See also Wars of Yugoslav Succession).

On April 27, 1992, Serbia and Montenegro declared themselves the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), thus tacitly acknowledging the independence of the four breakaway republics. While the international community recognized the independence of the breakaway republics (except Macedonia due to a dispute with Greece over the name and other issues) by mid-1992, international organizations failed to recognize the FRY as the legal successor to the former Yugoslavia.

B.

Economic Developments

The breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars of Yugoslav succession seriously damaged the economy of the FRY. The crippled economy experienced a period of runaway inflation, high unemployment (more than 60 percent in 1993), and a collapse in production.

In May 1992 the United Nations (UN) imposed economic sanctions on the FRY in an attempt to halt Serbian support of Bosnian Serb offensives and atrocities in Bosnia. The sanctions dealt a further blow to the damaged economy, and living standards in Serbia and Montenegro declined significantly. By the following year an estimated 750,000 people in the FRY had lost their jobs. Milošević and his allies aroused further discontent by personally acquiring many state companies in the name of privatization. In 1994 the UN lifted nontrade sanctions against the FRY—those affecting travel, sport, and cultural contacts—partly on the condition that the FRY would cut off aid to Bosnian and Croatian Serbs. However, this condition was not met.

The refusal of the UN and other international organizations to recognize the legitimacy of the FRY made securing loans, foreign investment, trade credits, and normal trade relations difficult, if not impossible, throughout the 1990s. Nevertheless, the FRY made a modest economic recovery in the mid-1990s. Tough measures designed to reduce public spending and increase productivity, along with the introduction of a new currency in early 1994, helped bring inflation under control. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate approaching 6 percent in 1994 and 1995. Unemployment fell, although it remained high at about 30 percent.

Developments in the other former republics continued to affect the FRY’s economy in the mid-1990s. In 1995 Croatian government troops regained most of the regions of Croatia that Croatian Serb nationalists had controlled since 1991, which produced a flood of Serb refugees estimated at 646,000 into the FRY. This created additional economic strain and social unrest. In December 1995 the Dayton peace accord ended the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Milošević, although still blamed by most of the international community for instigating civil wars and Serb war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, skillfully maneuvered himself into acceptance by the United States and the UN as an essential peacemaker in Bosnia. His role in securing the Dayton peace accord prompted the UN to lift the remaining sanctions against the FRY in October 1996, except for an “outer wall” of financial sanctions. Because of this outer wall, the FRY still could not join international organizations or receive aid from international financial institutions and the U.S. government.

C.

Political Developments

Meanwhile, in the years following the formation of the FRY, the government of Serbia under Milošević had more power than the federal government or the government of Montenegro. Elections in Serbia and the FRY produced fluctuations in legislative seats and mandates, but no reduction in Milošević’s hold on power, nor in that of his party, the SPS. In Serbia’s presidential and parliamentary elections in December 1992, which were termed unfair by international observers and opposition parties, Milošević was reelected president but the SPS lost its majority in the Serbian Assembly. The SPS, however, retained power by forming a minority government with the support of a new ultranationalist party, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), created and led by Vojislav Šešelj.

After Milošević’s reelection, his supporters in the Federal Assembly voted to oust the FRY’s first president, Serbian writer Dobrica Ćosić, and its first prime minister, Serbian-American businessman Milan Panić. Both originally had been Milošević’s choices, but had begun to challenge his authority. Their replacements, Montenegrin Rade Kontić as prime minister and Serbian Zoran Lilić as president, were fully supportive of Milošević. Meanwhile, Momir Bulatović, president of Montenegro since 1990, was reelected. His party, the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPSCG), retained the largest share of seats in the Montenegrin parliament. The DPSCG fully supported Milošević’s policies.

In October 1993, threatened with a no-confidence vote proposed by the SRS, Milošević dissolved the Serbian Assembly and scheduled elections for December. The SPS won the largest share of legislative seats, although still short of a majority. A coalition of opposition parties called the Democratic Movement for Serbia (DEPOS; later reformed as Zajedno, meaning “Together”) moved into second place, while the SRS dropped to third.

Federal elections in this period produced similar results. In November 1996 a coalition of the SPS, New Democracy (ND), and the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), led by Milošević’s wife, Mirjana Marković, won the majority of seats in the FRY’s federal legislature. However, Serbian local elections produced Zajedno victories in Belgrade and several other cities. Milošević nullified these results, citing election irregularities. This sparked daily protest demonstrations in Belgrade and elsewhere, which continued until Zajedno-led local governments were finally installed in February 1997. Zajedno leaders pledged to drive Milošević from power, but the coalition quickly crumbled into factions.

In July 1997 Milošević, barred by the Serbian republican constitution from another term as Serbian president, was elected president of the FRY. This shifted the political dynamics of the FRY, moving actual power from the government of Serbia to the federal government. With Milošević’s move to the federal government, the SRS made significant gains in Serbian parliamentary and presidential elections that fall. Nevertheless, a coalition of the SPS and the JUL captured the greatest number of seats, while Milan Milutinović, an ally of Milošević, won the Serbian presidency. In Montenegro, Milo Djukanović, previously a supporter but now an open critic of Milošević, defeated Milošević supporter Bulatović to become president.

When Milošević’s supporters also lost the parliamentary elections in Montenegro in May 1998, the SPS and its allies violated the federal constitution to install Bulatović, the loser of the Montenegrin presidential elections, as federal prime minister. After that time, Montenegro’s government regarded the federal government as illegitimate, and some Montenegrin politicians spoke of possible secession.

D.

Conflict in Kosovo

In the late 1990s another conflict emerged between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo, in southwestern Serbia. Milošević had ended Kosovo’s autonomous status in 1989, and in 1990 the Serbian government had dissolved Kosovo’s parliament and imposed direct Serbian rule. Years of passive resistance proved fruitless, and in the mid-1990s a militant ethnic Albanian separatist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), formed in the province. The KLA attacked Serbian police in Kosovo repeatedly in late 1997 and early 1998, and in March 1998 Serbian police in the province responded with disproportionate retaliation, killing many Kosovar Albanians who were not involved with the KLA. Growing numbers of Kosovar Albanians joined or supported the KLA, which gained at least partial control over nearly 40 percent of Kosovo by early summer. FRY army units joined Serbian police in driving both the KLA and civilians into the mountains or abroad by systematically bombarding, pillaging, and burning homes and villages.

In October 1998 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), provoked into action by portrayals of Serbian brutality in the international mass media, threatened an aerial bombardment of FRY military targets unless Serbia withdrew its army and police to barracks. Under intensive diplomatic and military pressure, Milošević agreed to a partial withdrawal of Serbian police and FRY troops and to negotiations aimed at restoring some autonomy to Kosovo. He did not honor the agreement, however. The KLA continued its own attacks, and heavy fighting in Kosovo resumed in November.

Under growing international pressure, the FRY government and Kosovar Albanian representatives agreed to negotiate near Paris, France, in February and March 1999, but the parties could not agree on a peaceful solution. Milošević rejected a plan to place a NATO security force in Kosovo that would also have free passage throughout Serbia. This rejection prompted NATO forces, led by the United States, to begin air strikes against military and other targets throughout the FRY in late March. Serbian-led assaults on ethnic Albanians intensified, with Serbian police and FRY army units burning whole villages and forcing the residents to flee.

In late May 1999 the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) unsealed an indictment accusing Milošević and four other senior Serbian officials of committing war crimes in Kosovo. One of the officials indicted was Serbian president Milan Milutinović.

On June 3, 1999, Milošević finally agreed to an international peace plan for Kosovo. A diplomatic envoy from Russia, usually regarded as an ally of the FRY, participated in the negotiations between the FRY and NATO that led to an agreement. FRY military leaders approved the agreement on June 9, following intense negotiations over the details of FRY troop withdrawals and the composition of an international security force to be posted in Kosovo. After verifying that FRY troops were beginning to withdraw from Kosovo, NATO suspended its bombing on June 10. The UN Security Council authorized peacekeeping forces to enter the province, and Kosovo was placed under UN administration.

As many as 50,000 international peacekeepers were deployed to help ensure the safe return of refugees to Kosovo. About 1 million Kosovar Albanians had been forced to leave the province during the worst of the conflict (from March 1998 to June 1999), according to a UN estimate. The largest number of refugees fled to Albania, while many others fled to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or to Montenegro. After a UN civilian administration was set up in Kosovo in June 1999, nearly all of the Kosovar Albanian refugees returned. However, about 200,000 non-Albanian residents, mostly Serbs, then fled the province to other parts of Serbia, as they became the targets of revenge attacks.

Meanwhile, the Kosovo crisis brought all economic recovery in the FRY to a halt. The United States and the European Union (EU) reimposed some economic sanctions. The NATO bombing campaign from March to June 1999 had destroyed key industries and infrastructure in the FRY, leading to severe economic hardship.

E.

End of the Milošević Era

Milošević emerged from defeat in Kosovo, his third lost war, with his control over a desperately poor, isolated, and now badly bomb-damaged Serbia apparently undiminished. In July 2000 he dictated amendments to the constitution of the FRY that provided for popular (rather than parliamentary) election and reelection of the federal president. He then called early elections, to be held at the end of September 2000, for the federal presidency and parliament, as well as for municipal assemblies.

Milošević fatally miscalculated the reaction of the opposition and Serbia’s voters. A total of 18 opposition parties, whose fragmentation and quarrels had previously helped him hold on to power, united to form the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) and to back a joint candidate for president of the FRY, Vojislav Koštunica. Koštunica, a scholar of constitutional law, was widely respected as a moderate Serb nationalist with a consistently democratic, anti-Communist, and anti-Milošević record.

On election day, September 24, 2000, Koštunica won 53 percent of the vote to Milošević’s 35 percent—despite blatant vote-rigging and fraud on the part of Milošević’s supporters. Koštunica’s absolute majority made a runoff election unnecessary. The DOS won 59 of 138 seats in the federal parliament’s more powerful Chamber of Citizens (compared to 44 seats for a united slate of Milošević’s SPS and his wife’s JUL) and also won control of about 100 municipal governments.

After several days of silence, the SPS-dominated Federal Election Commission announced a different and clearly not credible result, giving Koštunica 49 percent of the vote and therefore requiring a runoff election. Shortly thereafter the Federal Constitutional Court annulled the elections of September 24. The DOS called for a countrywide general strike and mass demonstrations in Belgrade on October 5. On that day the demonstrators, an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people from all over Serbia, stormed and occupied the FRY parliament building and the government radio-television station while police retreated or joined them.

Serbia’s almost nonviolent revolution ended its first phase on October 6, 2000, when Milošević met with Koštunica, congratulated him on his victory, and announced his own defeat on national television. FRY military leaders pledged their loyalty to the new commander in chief. Formally inaugurated the following day, Koštunica pledged that the FRY, still including Montenegro and Kosovo, would now “rejoin Europe.”

Other bastions of the old regime were still to be won, including Serbia’s powerful presidency and parliament. In October 2000, after difficult negotiations, DOS and SPS leaders agreed to hold new elections for Serbia’s parliament in December. In the elections the DOS won 64 percent of the vote and 176 of the 250 seats. The SPS took only 14 percent of the vote and 37 seats. Zoran Djindjic, a leader of the DOS and head of the Democratic Party (DS), became prime minister of Serbia. He pledged to push for democratic and economic reforms and called for the arrest and prosecution—in Serbian courts—of people accused of committing atrocities during the wars of Yugoslav succession.

Meanwhile, ethnic Albanian insurgents launched armed attacks on FRY police forces and against Serb civilians in a thin buffer zone that NATO had insisted be set up on the Serbian side of the Kosovo border. FRY army forces were not permitted to enter the buffer zone. In December 2000 the UN Security Council condemned the insurgents. After NATO forces failed to rein in the insurgents on the Kosovo side of the border, FRY army troops were allowed to reenter the buffer zone in March 2001.

In March 2001 the Serbian government arrested Milošević. He was charged with embezzlement and abuse of power. The FRY government rejected demands to hand him over for prosecution by the ICTY, the UN war crimes tribunal located in The Hague. However, in June the Serbian government, responding to international pressure, extradited Milošević to the ICTY to face trial, despite a ruling by the Yugoslav Constitutional Court to stop his handover. Western leaders praised the transfer and pledged more than $1 billion to help rebuild the FRY economy, although most of that aid consisted of canceling old debts incurred under the rule of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito.

After Milošević’s downfall in late 2000, the FRY’s international isolation quickly came to an end. By the end of the year it was readmitted to the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). All international economic sanctions against the country were lifted. The European Union (EU) and the IMF began to provide aid for economic reconstruction. However, economic recovery proceeded slowly, due in large part to political instability in the federal government of the FRY, and strained relations between the constituent republics of Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegro had severed its economy from federal control during the Milošević era. It pursued a more ambitious program of privatization, and sought closer economic ties with Western Europe. In 2002 it adopted the monetary unit of the EU, the euro, as its national currency.

Milošević’s trial before the ICTY began in February 2002. He elected to act as his own lawyer. He was ultimately charged with more than 60 crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The trial was repeatedly delayed because of Milošević’s poor health, however. He died in prison in March 2006 before a verdict could be reached.

F.

Final Years of the Union

Public opinion within Montenegro on whether to remain in a union with Serbia remained bitterly divided, even after Milošević’s ouster in 2000. Such divisions stirred concerns at home and abroad that any move toward secession could trigger clashes in Montenegro between pro-Serb and pro-independence camps. Nevertheless, Montenegro’s political will to move toward independence led to EU-mediated talks on the issue between government leaders from the federal and republic levels. In March 2002 leaders of Serbia and Montenegro signed a framework agreement to preserve the union.

This agreement led to the adoption of a new constitutional charter in February 2003. The charter officially replaced the FRY with the new union of Serbia and Montenegro. The charter officially declared the equality of the two member states in the union and provided for a joint presidency, but with limited executive powers. The charter also gave each member state the right, after a three-year period, to hold a referendum on the issue of full independence.

A new 126-member Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro was established with 91 Serbian and 35 Montenengrin members, in accordance with the new charter. The new assembly elected a Montenegrin, Svetozar Marovic, as the union’s president. Marovic replaced former FRY president Koštunica, whose term ended when the FRY was dissolved.

In May 2006 Montenegro held a public referendum on the issue of independence. According to an EU-brokered agreement between Serbia and Montenegro, at least 55 percent of the votes needed to be in favor of independence for the referendum to pass. In the final tally, 55.5 percent of voters chose independence. In June the two republics formally became separate nations, and “Serbia and Montenegro” ceased to exist.