Vucic: Pandora's box was not opened by attack on Ukraine, but much before that

NEW YORK - Pandora's box was not opened by the attack on Ukraine but much before that, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in his address to the 79th UN General Assembly session on Tuesday evening.

The collapse of the modern world began when we stopped believing in law and stated appeasing force, he said.

"I will explain this to you through the example of my country - to me, the most beautiful country in the world, Serbia - how it was being destroyed and trampled on and how today, because of its tenacity and freedom-loving tradition, it is a small stone in the shoes of the big and powerful," he said.

After the great victories won by the better part of humanity in two world wars, the Serbs as a nation suffered the biggest casualties in WWI relative to their size, as well as in WWII, when they were one of the few nations in southeastern Europe that confronted the Nazis from the very beginning, he said.

"We Serbs were not, unlike others, welcoming Nazi tanks with flowers, and we paid a high price for that," he said.

"I would like to warn you, dear friends, of what has happened to Serbia - a precedent that is being used and abused in different parts of the world, to warn you of the Pandora's box that was opened not two or five years ago, but much before, and that everybody is so loudly silent about," he said.

"The absolute dominance of the Western capitalist way of manufacturing, supremacy in science and technology, a convincing victory against the Eastern contender, the Soviet Union - first of all, within the framework of the Third Industrial Revolution - brought the world, some would say, to the end of history, and a complete hegemony of Western ideas in all spheres of social life," he said.

"Apart from, of course, the good things this has brought to mankind, such dominance and non-existence of balance and multilateralism destroyed the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia at the same time," he said.

This did not happen by accident or by itself but was "helped by the decisive involvement of Western intelligence services" supported by the corrupt national elites both in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Vucic said.

He dismissed as utterly untrue claims the attack on Ukraine had opened Pandora's box and undermined international law in a precedent not seen in Europe since WWII.

"Just to make things clear - Serbia supports the UN Charter and the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and we did not question it for a moment, nor shall we," he said.

"However, when big leaders speak vigorously and ardently here about the need for Ukrainian freedom, about observance of the UN and its Charter and resolutions, I ask myself: Why do not they observe the UN Charter and Resolution 1244 when it comes to the territorial integrity of Serbia?" he said.

He noted that Serbia had been attacked in 1999 without UN consent and that, at the time, the aggressors "could not care less about the UN Charter, UN resolutions and international law."

He said that, in those days, Western countries had been an "uncontested power that did not ask anyone about anything."

"And they thought it would go on like that for hundreds of years," he said.

"Substantially, the destiny of one small nation, with no rights and justice applied, was decided by the big and mighty Western powers," he said.

"First, they helped tear Yugoslavia apart along the lines of internal communist borders. Interestingly, once they were finished with that, we thought it was the end, but there was no end - that is when they started tearing Serbia apart - an independent, democratic and internationally recognised country, a member of the UN and the OSCE - and only Serbia," Vucic said.

Today, they speak passionately about defence of the alleged sovereignty of states from secession and separatism, until the next occasion when secession and separatism will be justified by alleged humanitarian disasters and everything else they do not accept as an argument in other cases, he said.

Vucic showed a document stipulating that no one else except a force under UN control - which is now KFOR - was allowed to have armed forces in the territory of Kosovo-Metohija, a part of Serbia under UNSCR 1244.

He said those who had committed the aggression on Serbia and tried to secede a part of its territory were still trying to convince Serbia a secession of Kosovo-Metohija was the only democratic solution.

They have been providing arms on a daily basis to what is now the so-called Kosovo Security Force and will tomorrow become an armed force of ethnic Albanians in Serbian territory, he added.

"Their message is: 'We are the power, we are God, we do not care about the UN, the law of the UN and UN resolutions. We can do whatever we want, the way we want and as long as we want,'" he said.

"Everybody in the world speaks about Ukraine, no one dares to speak about Serbia. Even if they do, they say we will start a war in the Balkans on Russian orders. They have been lying all the time for more than two and a half years," Vucic said, noting that Serbia was neither a servant of Russia nor of the US.

"We have our own policy and our own interests," he said.

"The only hope not only for my country, which I love more than anything in the world, but also for your countries, is to understand well the mechanisms of lies, the mechanisms of fraud in international relations, and to try to gather here in the most important organisation, to try to change it, to try to respect it, because it is the only way to preserve peace," he said.