The new President of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, said during his inauguration speech on Thursday that his election victory reflected the growing support for democracy and reform in the republic.

However, he said the latest events in the republic showed that democracy was facing many challenges.

"My victory in the presidential elections is an expression of the further strengthening of democratic forces in Montenegro who have rallied around our programme of a free, democratic and open society, a society of economic reforms and of full dialogue with the rest of the world," he said in the speech, carried live by Montenegrin TV.

"Democracy is our future.

It is constantly tested and it permanently faces the judgment of the people, but likewise the many prejudices, challenges, the inertia of old forces and the unintelligibility of new things, which is best confirmed by the current developments.

"I consider it to be to Montenegro's greatest credit that we have managed to preserve and strengthen interethnic and interreligious tolerance, and that minorities in Montenegro feel it to be their country and are keen to build it as such," he said.

Djukanovic said he supported the belief that it was in Serbia's and Montenegro's best interests to live in a joint state.

But he said the Montenegrin people alone should decide on the republic's status.

"Throughout its entire history, Serbia and the Serbian people have never had nor will they have a more honest and reliable friend than Montenegro.

This was and this is the case, and this will be the case throughout my entire mandate and presidency.

"Only the Montenegrin people, that is, the citizens of Montenegro can decide whether to change Montenegro's statute within the joint state.

No-one else either in or outside Montenegro can do this," he said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

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