 child at Podlastva Addressing a service at a monastery in southern Montenegro to commemorate a massacre of Royalist guerrillas by Tito's Second World War Communist partisans, the Prince said the country needed "radical reform and a radical reconstruction of both society and state". Prince Alexander, who was speaking in advance of a massive pro-democracy demonstration planned for today in the southern Yugoslav town of Cacak, said that whatever their ethnic background or origins all the people of Yugoslavia should be treated the same. He said: "Our country must be a country of justice, freedom and progress. It is part of Europe and must have its right place in Europe. There is no room there for the current president of the federal state [Milosevic]." Although Prince Alexander returned to Yugoslavia in 1991 following the collapse of the old East Bloc, he has refused to go back since because of Milosevic's "incorrect" policies. His visit to Montenegro is an embarrassment for the Yugoslav authorities, who tried to disrupt yesterday's visit by forcing the aircraft carrying the Prince and his wife, Princess Katherine, to make a 500-mile detour. But the jet was guided in by a Nato aircraft in time for the Prince to address several hundred people at the Podlastva monastery. The Montenegrin Crown Prince, Nikola, who is in exile in Paris, is regarded by many Montenegrins as their king, and the government in Podgorica is anxious not to be seen to be taking sides between the two. |
|
|