The modest discharge of celebratory gunfire following the re-election of Monte-negro's young and reforming Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic would have been drowned out by the cheering from the leaders of Western European nations. Djukanovic is not a saint - indeed few politicians of that persuasion are to be found in federal Yugoslavia - but his early days as a rabid nationalist in the Slobodan Milosevic mould are long gone. What appears to have changed him is the economic devastation visited on Yugoslavia by a combination of Milosevic's warped policies and the sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia by the international community as a result of Milosevic's attempts to fulfil the Serbian national dream.

Djukanovic's estrangement from Milosevic and his re-election on a platform of reform is exceedingly bad news for the president of federal Yugoslavia. Milosevic had hoped for a victory in Montenegro for like-minded politicians who would have enabled him to alter

the federal constitution, thus securing another term as president beyond the one which ends in three years. Djukanovic has ended that dream and may even oppose Milosevic's policy in Kosovo, where heightened violence is reported. Hope for the future can, it seems, rise in the most unexpected of places.