Podgorica - Montenegro's coalition partners protested yesterday against scheduled talks this week between their leading party and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's Socialists, saying the meeting could destroy the Montenegro government. Montenegro, Serbia's smaller sister-republic in Yugoslavia, has been increasingly at odds with Mr Milosevic, especially over the Kosovo war.
Parliamentary groups of the dominant Democratic Socialist Party (DPS) and Mr Milosevic's ruling Socialists are scheduled to meet on Wednesday in Belgrade for what the DPS has called a pulse-taking.
But Mr Novak Kilibarda, a Montenegro deputy-premier and leader of a junior coalition party, said the coalition would come to grief if the DPS "continues its little game" in Belgrade.
The DPS is the party of Montenegro's reformist President Milo Djukanovic, who has sharply criticised Mr Milosevic and his "autistic, xenophobic regime in permanent conflict with the whole world".