January 28, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 24, 1423

BELGRADE, Jan 27: Serbia’s parliament adopted a Western-backed agreement on Monday to form a loose union with Montenegro that would officially bury Yugoslavia after the old socialist federation collapsed in bloodshed in the 1990s.

The 250-seat assembly of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic voted with 166 deputies for and 47 against the deal reshaping the federation into a new union of Serbia and Montenegro. It also backed legislation on implementing the deal.

Montenegro is also expected to pass the new union’s constitutional charter when its parliament meets on Tuesday.

The union will formally become a reality once it is approved by the federal parliament at a session which has yet to be called.

Leaders of Serbia and Montenegro agreed under European Union pressure last year to stay together for now in a union leaving most powers with the republics. It took them almost a year of wrangling to finalise the deal.

They were the only two republics still in Yugoslavia after Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Slovenia broke away in the 1990s, when autocrat Slobodan Milosevic governed the Balkan country.

Yugoslavia was first established as a royal dictatorship in 1929, before coming under communist rule after World War Two.—Reuters