Montenegrin New Premier of Yugoslavia

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica named a Montenegrin official Tuesday to become the new prime minister, moving to replace the federal government that collapsed in a dispute over Slobodan Milosevic’s extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

The appointment of Dragisa Pesic, a little-known member of Montenegro’s Socialist People’s Party, followed days of negotiations between Kostunica’s pro-democracy coalition in Serbia and its partners in Montenegro, the smaller of Yugoslavia’s two republics.

The new effort to form a federal Cabinet, despite serious disagreements between the republics and a strong independence movement in Montenegro, is apparently aimed at saving what is left of Yugoslavia. Pesic was finance minister in the previous Cabinet.

Kostunica said the Cabinet will draft a constitutional platform meant to redefine and improve ties between Serbia and Montenegro. He said the document should be finished by the end of August.

Pesic’s predecessor, Zoran Zizic, who is from the same party, resigned after the Serbian government handed Milosevic over to the tribunal in The Hague.