Europe | Montenegro and Serbia

A family feud

Montenegrin quarrels over forthcoming elections could turn violent

|podgorica

WHETHER they consider him an evil genius or a national hero (and both views have plenty of advocates, often in the same household), people in Montenegro feel they are uniquely well-placed to assess Slobodan Milosevic and his intentions. After all, like many a power-broker in Belgrade, the Yugoslav president can trace his own origins to the lawless Montenegrin highlands—a spectacular but ethnically confused sort of place where some people call the Serbs their historic adversaries, and others (again, often in the same family) consider themselves not only Serbs, but super-Serbs whose loyalty to the nation is second to none.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “A family feud”

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