PODGORICA, Serbia, May 22 (UPI) -- Montenegro has voted to secede from its union with Serbia, referendum officials said Monday, with 55.4 percent of voters choosing independence.
The announcement by Frantisek Lipka, president of the Montenegrin referendum commission, was broadcast live on Serbia-Montenegro's national radio station.
Lipka said that 86.3 percent of 485,000 eligible voters turned out for Sunday's referendum.
European Union officials in Brussels had set a minimum of 55 percent for a successful referendum.
Montenegro's Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic had already declared victory overnight, saying that Montenegro had reinstated its independence after 88 years in a joint state with Serbia and other nations of the former Yugoslavia.
After the bloody disintegration of the six-republic Yugoslav federation in 1992, Montenegro, with a population of 650,000, and Serbia, with 7.5 million, formed the rump Yugoslavia in 1992, and in 2003, set up the state union Serbia-Montenegro.
Since the downfall of the Serbian regime of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, the Montenegrin authorities had advocated independence from Belgrade.
