A total of 55.5 percent of participating Montenegrin voters supported the Balkan republic's independence from the state union of Serbia-Montenegro, the final results of a referendum showed on Wednesday.

"On the basis of the results of the referendum on the legal status of the republic of Montenegro it is noted that a total of 55.5 percent of the valid votes voted 'Yes'," Frantisek Lipka, president of the Republican Referendum Commission in Montenegro, said in Podgorica.

Under conditions mediated by the European Union, the independence will not be valid unless the May 21 referendum passes the threshold of 55 percent of votes with a turnout of at least half of the mountainous republic's 484,718 registered voters.

Montenegro's Constitutional Court said on Tuesday that no complaints regarding the referendum process were filed by the deadline of Tuesday, although more than 200 complaints from the pro-Serbian bloc were rejected by the Republican Referendum Commission.

The Montenegrin parliament is due to hold a session late this week to proclaim the independence of Montenegro.

However, the People's Party, one of the opposition parties in Montenegro, announced on Wednesday that it did not accept the final results of the referendum and its deputies in parliament would not attend the session of the proclamation of independence.

"The outcome of the referendum is a direct result of brutal pressure, blackmail, payouts, media manipulations and existential conditioning to vote for the option of an independent Montenegro," the party's spokesman Ivanka Antonic said.

Serbia-Montenegro, which was renamed from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in February 2003, is a loose union with only limited ministries of foreign affairs, defense and human rights. The two republics have different laws, customs, currencies and border services.

Source: Xinhua