From the Montenegrin Society, Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts, Montenegrin P.E.N. Centre and Montenegrin Association of Independent Writers

An Open Letter to Mr Xavier Solana

21 February 2002

Dear Mr Solana,

With regret, we note that your "project" of re-defining the only formally existing Montenegro and Serbia has stirred up profound discontent in the majority of the population of Montenegro, since their right to free expression of their desire with regard to the state framework in which they wish to live is thereby denied.  Thus the universal right of peoples to self-determination, and the whole body of human rights on which the constitution of the European Union and the rest of the democratic world has been founded, is flagrantly abused.   Montenegrin creative intelligentsia has over all these years strongly opposed Milosevic's genocidal actions and violence of all kinds, and therefore is even more revolted by the attempts at imposing on Montenegro the unacceptable solutions for its legal-statehood status.

After World War I, the winner-countries callously eliminated the Kingdom of Montenegro, the old sovereign state and their war ally, and annexed it to Serbia.   With this unheard-of act Europe left Montenegro to the great-Serbian assimilative project that abolished the right of Montenegrins to their own historical heritage and national culture.  What is happening nowadays, unfortunately, resembles that brutal 1918, and fuels the painful historical experience of the Montenegrins in which freedom and independence could not be won without victims and blood.   What is astonishing is the fact that in Europe today the ideas can exist that the Montenegrin people be denied the right to a democratic declaration of their own destiny.

The intentions and previous results of the mediating mission were experienced by the Montenegrin intelligentsia as a lobbying for the interests of the Milosevican Serbia.  Anti-European, expansionist Milosevican authorities in Belgrade, which not so long ago condemned Your Excellency and other leading statesmen of Europe to years-long imprisonment, have their successors in the present "federal" authorities and pro-Milosevican opposition in Montenegro --- which is also confirmed by the fact that the said court sentences (as much as Milosevic's constitutional coup) have not yet been abolished.  The implementation of the actual European offer for the settlement of the relations between Montenegro and Serbia would strengthen the conviction of the chauvinists that crime pays, and that Milosevic and his followers, at least as far as Serbia is concerned, were on the right path.

We are aware that Europe disposes of potentials to offer Montenegro, once again, as the victim to the great-Serbian imperialistic appetites, but in that case it will sacrifice also its fundamental humanistic and democratic principles.  Our independent associations, created as an intellectual resistance movement against Milosevic's criminal plans and war raids, express their profound discontent because of the repeated violence against the majority will of the Montenegrin citizens.

For Montenegrin Society (Matica Crnogorska): Mr Branko Banjevic, President

For Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts (DANU): Mr Jevrem Brkovic, President

For Montenegrin P.E.N. Centre: Mr Sreten Perovic, President

For Montenegrin Association of Independent Writers: Mr Milorad Popovic, President