On 27 June 1941 Milutinović was elected as a member of the Supreme Staff of the National Liberation Partisan Units of Yugoslavia. During the Uprising in Montenegro, Chetnik commander Bajo Stanišić wanted to negotiate with the Partisans but Ivan Milutinović, as a commander of the Partisan forces in Montenegro, refused to reply to Stanišić's proposal. Milutinović had numerous exhausting polemics with Terence Atherton in futile attempts to convince him to change his positive view about Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović.