Milicevic: Countries in region have never wanted open dialogue with Serbia

BELGRADE - Serbian Minister without portfolio Djordje Milicevic, who is in charge of coordinating activities and measures in the field of relations with the diaspora, said on Tuesday countries in the region had never wanted open dialogue with Serbia but had instead insisted on dialogue with a part of the "powerful international community."

Speaking about the five key points of an anti-Serbian agenda recently addressed by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Milicevic said they included a "moral mutilation" of Serbia.

"Moral mutilation of Serbia is about the fact that countries in the region have always worked for the interests of others and that they have never wanted dialogue with Serbia," Milicevic told Prva TV.

"It is also about revisionism, because no one talks about Jasenovac (a death camp in the WWII-era Independent State of Croatia where hundreds of thousands of Serbs were brutally killed) or 'Operation Storm' (a Croatian military and police operation in which around 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Croatia in August 1995) but, on the other hand, what we can hear is that Serbia is to blame for the breakup of Yugoslavia," Miicevic said.

He said the second point of the agenda was very important as it was about "weakening Serbia economically and slowing down its European integration and economic growth."

He said Vucic had been right in saying coordinated media activities were underway.

"Specifically, you will never read a single positive news piece from Pristina, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Montenegro about President Vucic and Serbia, but you will always find negative news," Milicevic said.

He said even the news that Republika Srpska had recently decided against moving towards dissociation from Bosnia and Herzegovina had been ignored by regional media outlets.

"That should be positive news if we are talking about Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole, but it was no news. Why? Because they want to drag Serbia into a conflict," Milicevic said.

"That is where we get to the fourth point, the final stage, which they see as the end - a disappearance of Serbia," he noted.